Frizzy Hair and Field Trips
by wolfchic011
Summary: They gave me an impossible task. 1 year. 1 year to guide 8 human students towards the futures I had seen for them. What were those futures? Finding out is half the fun! But what else will I discover along the way? A story about Ms. Frizzle and her adventures as the Teacher. Based heavily on the fan theory that Ms. Frizzle is a Time Lord. Prequel to the Culmination.
1. Day 1

A/N: This story is labeled as MSB but is in fact a kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really-unless-you're-into-that-kind-of-thing cross-over with Doctor Who. But I still think someone entirely unfamiliar with Doctor Who would be able to follow this story. This is all just to expand on my growing theory that the Frizz is in fact a Time Lord (or rather a Time Lady) who came to Earth for one specific reason.

If you like this idea and/or this story, I urge you to also check out my other MSB/DW crossovers _The Culmination_ and _Conversations_ which detail what happens to each of Ms. Frizzle's students 20 years after the adventures of the series ends and are intended as the 'sequels' to this story.

Starts with a prologue then goes through each episode in the series in order they aired. Updates should be about once a week.

* * *

Frizzy Hair and Field Trips

Prologue: Day 1

"Good morning class! Welcome!" I beamed at the seven bright young faces staring up at me apprehensively. Was it the hair? I rather liked this hair. This body. Not at all like my last one. The last hair I had was far too flat, too boring. This hair was new and exciting. Thrilling. And it was ginger. Ginger was exciting. Promising.

The class still had not moved. "I am Ms. Frizzle." I told them, with a small bow. Frizzle was the name I'd chosen. Valerie Frizzle. It just seemed right. It matched this body perfectly. And I couldn't very well use my real name, now could I?

Everything should be in place. I was ready for this year, the year that would change everything.

"Who's that?" A blonde girl with ponytails (Keesha? No… no Dorothy Anne) asked pointing to my shoulder. I turned my head slightly and smiled.

"This is my trusty assistant and companion, Liz… Liz." I decided. After all, her full name was a little too eccentric. Liz smiled at the students and gave them a friendly wave with one hand, gripping my hair with the other to keep her balance. The blonde girl and a few others waved back, still looking slightly apprehensive.

Lizalria couldn't talk yet, Silurians didn't begin to speak until they were two, but her motor skills were superb for a toddler. She was also surprisingly tolerant of the "apes" her race despised. Probably because she hadn't known any of her people. They all still lay beneath the earth, fast asleep, not to awaken for another thousand years or so. Lizalria had been accidentally woken up upon my last trip to Earth where a landing malfunction had caused me to disturb a frozen hatchery. So Lizalria or, Liz as I would now call her, was my responsibility as well. But she showed no ill-will towards me, me being the closest thing to a mother she was likely to have. Maybe once our time here was up, I'd take her to the future. Or the past. Let her see her proud race upon the Earth again. Leave her with her own kind. But that was too far ahead to think about now. For this year, Liz would be staying with me as my constant companion and the only inhabitant of this planet who would know who I really was.

"What kind of lizard is she?" Asked a boy in a red baseball cap. He was sitting in the front group of desks and peered at Liz with a curious kind of fascination. I already knew his name. He was Ralphie.

"The best kind: a Certified Teaching Lizard." I replied, scooping her up into my arms. Liz gave a silent chuckle at my spontaneous creation of a title for her. She was a clever one. She'd be the perfect assistant this year.

"Uhhh.. excuse me…. Ms. Frizzle?"

I turned to the orange-haired human with his hand in the air. What was his name again? Carlos? No, that was the dark-haired boy… Arnold! That was it.

"Yes Arnold?"

He seemed a little surprised that I knew his name already. Did humans need to be reminded of a name several times? I'd have to remember that.

"Is it true that you take your classes on… on field trips a lot?" He asked apprehensively.

I grinned. This perception filter was working perfectly! Almost too perfectly… what else could it be creating about me? What other stories were there floating around this school to make me seem human?

"What an excellent suggestion Arnold!" Liz jumped out of my arms and ran across the floor towards the door.

Arnold swallowed hard and pulled at the collar of his shirt. "Suggestion…?"

"To the BUS!" I yelled, pointing out the window where my magnificent ship was parked. It had taken on the shape of a four-wheeled Earth vehicle but with some curious, distinctly none-Earth features such as the scopes on the front and the display on the helm. But I trusted that it knew what I needed. It always did.

The students all looked at each other in confusion as I marched to the door and turned on my heel. "Aren't you coming then?" I asked them.

After a moment of stunned silence, the small Asian girl leapt to her feet. "Come on, you weasly wimps!" She cried and dashed to my side. "Let's go!" My left heart jumped as I finally realized which one she was. Wanda Li. I placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and offered her a smile.

"Come along class!"

The dark-haired Mexican boy (Carlos) hesitantly stood and made his way to my side. Ralphie and the quiet African-American boy, Tim, followed. Slowly, the rest of the students stood up and made their way towards me, Arnold timidly bringing up the rear.

I grinned as I held the door open. "Single-file please!"

* * *

A few minutes later, we were driving along the road from the school, the BUS being very complacent with the slow speed I was taking. After all, I had no idea where I was going yet. But I trusted my ship to get me there.

"Where are we going, Ms. Frizzle?" Carlos asked me from the seat right behind where I operated the BUS. It was strange, the BUS had shrunk itself down to be only about the size of a standard vehicle. I wonder where all those other rooms went? They'd probably turn up eventually, they always did. It had also given us more than enough seats for myself and my students. Was it anticipating guests?

"Wherever we want." I replied to Carlos. We had quite literally, infinite possibilities. Well, nearly infinite thanks to the restrictions of my exile but close enough. "Where would you like to go?"

"Daredevil Junction?" Wanda asked hopefully.

"The art show?" Tim piped up.

"The space museum?" Dorothy Anne asked, her eyes shining.

"Home?" I heard Arnold mutter.

But my focus was on the African-American girl, Keesha who was looking out of the BUS window at the rolling fields of grasses we were passing.

"I wonder what it's like see the world from down there." She said, more to herself than to anyone else. "I bet it looks really different…"

A smile lit up my face. That's what I was waiting for.

"An excellent postulation, Keesha!" She jumped in surprise as I addressed her. Oh, was I not supposed to hear what she had said? I did have very good hearing. Or was that considered rude too?

I addressed the entire class. "So, does anyone know what it's like to see the world from a blade of grass?"

Silence.

"Well," Said Ralphie. "No. I mean, nobody's able to shrink themselves down to fit on a blade of grass. So, how would we know?"

Liz and I shared a wink. "Well now class, shall we investigate a little _closer_?" I set the BUS to shrinkerscope size –x15. I always wanted to see what it was like to walk along a blade of grass, even an Earth one. Besides, if this was going to work, I had to make sure my students realized the importance of having a different perspective as early as possible. What better time than the first day?

As I would probably say a lot in the future: there's always time to take chances. And a year could be a long time.

"Seatbelts everyone!" I yelled over my shoulder.

I pulled the lever and we began to spin.

The students screamed in surprise and confusion behind me. I smiled at Liz. She gave me a thumbs-up.

It was going to be a great year.

* * *

A.N.: Just a little intro to set the tone and establish some plot points. Hope you enjoyed it!


	2. Gets Lost in Space

**Gets lost in space**

I entered the classroom to find my students working diligently on their solar system diorama.

"Ah! Good morning class! Have you all met Arnold's cousin, Janet?" I placed a friendly hand on the stunned girl's shoulder.

"Yes Ms. Frizzle." The chorused back at me, sounding somewhat less than enthusiastic. I nodded at them and walked to my desk.

"My teacher doesn't dress like that." I heard Janet say to Arnold in a voice that was far from quiet.

"That's nothing." He replied coolly. "Sometimes the Friz looks totally outrageous."

Outrageous? Certain not in this little beauty. The BUS had provided this one especially for today. I did love it when she did that, it was like a little teaser of the adventures the day would contain.

And today certainly would be different.

I had nine today instead of the usual eight. A few weeks ago, the final one of my students, Phoebe Terese had joined us from her old school. She had started off rocky and insecure but my wonderful students welcomed her right in and helped her open up a little. She was one of my own now.

Janet however, was not but that didn't mean she couldn't be important. She was joining us today and that could only make things more interesting.

I placed my books on my desk and removed my planet-mobile head band. I opened my arms up to Liz and she eagerly crawled to her favorite spot across my shoulders. "Well, since we're lucky enough to have a guest today, I'd say it's the perfect time for a field trip!"

The students cheered and I led the way outside. I had something special planned for today. Time to teach Arnold how to stand up to his bossy cousin.

* * *

I drove to the planetarium at a normal pace even though the BUS cried to be going faster. No need to terrify Arnold's cousin. I stuck to the recommended speed limit, slow though it was.

Janet did not sound impressed by the surroundings. "We're going to the planetarium?" She observed. "Hardly unusual."

"The Friz, taking us on a normal field trip?" I heard Arnold say from the back seat where he and his cousin were sitting. "Believe me, that's unusual."

I turned to Liz and winked. Oh this field trip would be anything but ordinary.

As we pulled up to the entrance of the planetarium, I noticed that the gates were closed. Someone had placed a padlock on them! "How odd…" I said. "closed today…" No doubt because of some time jumping I would be doing later.

"Closed?" Arnold exclaimed.

"Oh well, looks like we'll just have to go back to school." I told the students as they groaned in disappointment. I pulled away from the curb waiting for the chance to make a u-turn.

"Some field trip Arnold." Janet said. "You know what? My teacher would have called ahead, because my teacher plans ahead, my teacher never makes mistakes! My teacher is a zillion times better than…"

"Nobody…" Arnold interrupted. "is better than Ms. Frizzle."

There it was. I smiled.

"Oh yeah?" Janet said challengingly. "PROVE IT!"

"STOP THE BUS!" Arnold yelled.

I obediently slammed on the brakes. Arnold marched up to my side with confident, determined strides.

"Yes Arnold?" I asked.

"Isn't there… you know… someplace ELSE you could take us?" He asked as the rest of the class looked on in anticipation.

"You mean, another planetarium?" I asked him with a smile. Could he be thinking what I was thinking?

"Well," He said. "sort of but… bigger."

He was. "Bigger?" I inquired just to be sure.

"You know," He smiled at me and whispered conspiratorially from behind his hand. "the… big one!"

I slapped the side of my head. And so this adventure would begin. Brilliant! "Oh Arnold! Why didn't I think of that?" I grabbed the BUS's manual chameleon circuit lever and pulled hard. My wonderful bus immediately responded gave me exactly what we needed even as I thought of it.

"T-5 and counting!" I called to my students as the BUS strapped them in for take-off.

As the BUS transformed and I continued the countdown, my mind raced. How best to do this? I'd need some kind of optimal space craft that was still suitable to Earth but with far more powerful boosters… We could do it. And so long as I coupled the time jump with the escape from Earth's atmosphere, we could easily jump back to 506 B.C. when most of the planets would be neatly aligned and fastest to visit…

"BLAST-OFF!"

With a roar of our new engines, we sprang off the ground and high into the atmosphere.

"WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Janet yelled from the backseat.

"A FIELD TRIP!" My students yelled back.

I took advantage of their momentary distraction to dematerialize and make the time jump. The shaking of the BUS hid any sounds our jump might have made.

The BUS was very happy to be back in the vortex even if just for a second, I heard her singing in my head, a single note of happiness that all my students would be deaf to.

Thanks to the time jump and the advanced rockets of the bus, it only took us a few seconds or, more accurately, about -2501 years to leave Earth's atmosphere and enter the wide emptiness of space.

"Into outer space?" I heard Janet say as Earth grew smaller and smaller below us. "Highly unusual…"

We leveled out as we hit open space. I killed the rockets to give us a moment of just floating in space. Ah, it had been too long!

"Welcome to outer space class. The only planetarium open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And how are all my astronauts doing?"

The students giggled as they got used to their new weightlessness. I was tempted but decided not to engage yet. I had to focus on this tour. As they all laughed and explored a world without gravity, I swung us around and headed for the sun. I pulled up a map on the BUS's screen.

"Hmmm…. Let's see now… we are just about… there! Wonderful! Let the tour begin!" I shouted to them. "We're coming up to the sun!"

The students all crowded around the windows to get a better look. We circled once around the sun, wearing our special heavy-duty, sunblock 8000 goggles that the BUS had so thoughtfully provided so that we could enjoy its splendor. Then off we shot to begin the tour of the planets.

* * *

A few minutes later, a red, sun-baked rock of a planet appeared out of the black cosmos.

"So class," I told them as they gathered around the screen to peer at the map. "we've traveled from Earth, around the sun, and now we are on our way too…"

"Mercury." Janet interjected. "The closest planet to the sun. When I tell my class, they're gonna be so jealous."

Our approach to Mercury was flawless despite the BUS and myself being out of practice.

"Wow, we're landing!" Several of my students said in unison.

"Of course." Couldn't show them the solar system without actually showing them the solar system, now could I?

"Told you, Janet." I heard Arnold whisper to his cousin.

We had to do a vertical landing but that was quickly remedied by the slight pull of Mercury's gravity.

The airlock opened and my students bounded out onto the surface of the new planet, marveling at the difference in gravity that allowed them to leap several feet in the air.

"We hardly weigh anything compared to my old planet, Earth!" Phoebe exclaimed as she, Ralphie and Dorothy Anne jumped over the craters and crags of Mercury's surface.

Off to the side, Keesha was practicing her ballet moves in the freedom of Mercury. "I wonder if that means there's less gravity pulling on us here." She said as I bounded out of the BUS and came to a stop at her side.

"Exactly Keesha." I told her. "Good thinking!" I patted her helmet gently. That was something humans did right? As a friendly gesture? Luckily, Liz saved me from any potentially awkward continuation by bouncing past on her tail, relishing in her first experience of different gravity. "Come along class," I called to the rest of my students. "follow the bouncing lizard!"

We followed Liz across the planet's surface, my students laughing and flapping their arms as if they were ready to fly. This planet almost reminded me of home. Only the fires of its center had burned out long ago. And I didn't have a home I could go back to anymore. Not for another year at least.

As we were hopping around, we came across several holes in the surface of the planet.

"Man," Ralphie said. "The aliens on Mercury sure make big footprints!"

"Nothing can live on Mercury, Ralphie." Keesha told him, reading the Thermo-probe. "It's too hot and dry during the day."

More like the species that visited here saw no need for climate control but there you go.

"And according to my research," D.A. was saying to Ralphie, "way below freezing at night."

"and day or night there's no air," I added. "Which makes it extremely difficult," I inhaled deeply. "to breathe." That is for species without bacterial cultures in their throats.

While Ralphie continued to speculate about the 'footprints' and Janet began demonstrating her knowledge of meteorites, I took a quick look around. Hmmm. There was a rather nice cliff over there, perhaps I'd let my students explore the impact of lower gravity on fall times.

"Come along class!" I called, leading the way to the cliff. We explored a little while longer before I decided we'd best get a move on if we wanted to see the rest of the planets. I pretended not to notice as Janet pushed the meteorite she had picked up on Mercury under her seat.

Humans.

* * *

We shot off for Venus. With the light-speed thrusters it took us about five minutes to reach our destination.

"We are now approaching…"

"Venus," Janet answered. "The second planet from the sun. I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait!" She cheered.

Our descent through Venus' storm clouds was rocky but as gentle as could possibly be under the circumstances. Good old BUS.

"Come along class." I called as we landed and set off across the planet's surface. I let them wander a little ways, exploring the surface. Janet pulled Arnold off, most of the rest of them hung pretty close to the BUS.

"Check out those weird clouds…" I heard Carlos say. I looked up at the swirling sulfurous storm clouds brewing overhead and smiled.

"Oh good," Wanda said. "A little rain will cool the place down."

"Except that's not rain water in those clouds, Wanda." I told her. "It's sulfuric acid."

"Sulfuric ACID?" Ralphie exclaimed.

I nodded. "It's a deadly poison." The perfect opportunity to test the full capabilities of these suits, not to mention the BUS's tolerance for acidity. "Oh we're perfectly safe." I assured my students, who looked more than a little worried. "As long as we keep our space suits on." Well, I was pretty sure they would hold up.

A little ways away, Arnold and his cousin were carrying more rocks. I pretended not to notice them even as we loaded back on the BUS (my students were not as keen to test the protectiveness of their suits as I was. Humans. What a pity.) and took off to continue our tour.

* * *

We passed Earth a few minutes later. The students marveled at their home planet out the windows commenting on how perfect it was to support their species. I didn't even slow down. I was fighting down my feelings of nostalgia and envy. No need to visit Earth, we'd be back there soon enough. No reason to cry in front of my students either.

Janet's voice interrupted my thoughts. "And coming up is Mars. The fourth planet." She walked up next to me and pointed at the map. "Right, Ms. Frizzle?"

"Very good Janet." I complemented her. "You certainly do know your planets." Maybe in the future she'd discover a new one. I wasn't too concerned about her future, it didn't shine out of the vortex of time like those of my other student's did when I tried to look. All the same though…

"I got straight A's on all my reports!" Janet was boasting, not noticing my distant look.

"We know, we know, enough already!" My class chorused.

Within a few minutes we had reached Mars.

"Ah, here we are class!" I told them as we approached my favorite planet in the system. "Take a look at Mars! How marvelous!" From a distance, it almost reminded me of home.

I made sure we landed on a section free of the Ice Warriors' settlements and put the shields and radar scramblers on full. No need for my students to meet an alien race. Yet. Too many complications and uncertainties, plus the Council would probably expand my one-year sentence to several decades.

"It looks like the whole place is rusting!" Tim observed as we looked around.

"No wonder it's called the "red planet."" Dorothy Anne agreed as she read up about Mars in one of her innumerable books.

"As you can see," I told them gesturing out over the planet's surface. "the soil here is colored by red dust, which has iron in it."

"Look at those cliffs of ice!" Tim yelled, pointing at the shear faces surrounding us.

Wanda was already halfway up one of them. "ice-climbing anyone?" She called down. The class ran to the wall and eagerly started to follow Wanda up. I joined in, ascending with ease. I hadn't gone ice climbing since my visit to the Himalayas. Thank goodness I remembered most of it!

"I wonder if Mars could have been another Earth." Keesha said as we reached the top and got a good look around the planet's surface. "If it had water and wasn't so cold!"

It was thinking like that that was going to drive the humans to the stars in the next century. But no need to jump into anything right now. Or maybe there was…

"Maybe." I agreed. "But as I always say, Mars is the best place for I Scream."

"Ice cream?" Ralphie asked, looking around excitedly. "Where?"

"Here." I replied. "I… SCREAAAAMMMM" I leapt off the cliff and plummeted down the far side, screaming the whole way. No reason education and going under the radar couldn't be fun! My class was right behind me as we jumped and fell our way back to the surface, landing in a dusty, shallow crater.

We did have a minor, momentary alien scare as Arnold appeared through a dust cloud, carrying buckets of red dust but everyone laughed about it.

Then humans left Mars for the last time until they would colonize the planet in 2056.

* * *

The BUS seemed to be having some difficulty engaging light-speed as we passed through the asteroid belt. Probably because her back was suddenly loaded down with Mars rocks and ice blocks and she didn't like it one bit. My students were talking and examining the asteroids but I was too busy trying to steer to answer some of their observations.

"It's part of the asteroid belt." I said once I had a few seconds between asteroids to speak up, and an opportunity to join in the conversation. "A ring of asteroids which divides our solar system into the inner and outer planets." This one certainly was a lot thicker than some of the other ones I'd seen.

The BUS suddenly ground to a standstill. The engines were dead. It appeared Janet had found the emergency brake, I had been wondering where that had got to…

As everyone floated about in confusion trying to figure out what had happened, Janet's voice rang out: "An asteroid! I've got to have one! Please? It'll only take me a second!"

"Watch out!" Arnold yelled pointing out the window. I turned just in time to see a rather large asteroid flying right at us. But with the engines cut and the BUS being dramatic due to being weighed down, there was little chance of avoiding it.

We were able to move just enough to duck under it but the giant hunk of rock hit the roof with a rather loud scrape. The whole BUS shuddered.

My students began to panic:

"What was that?"

"What happened?"

"What's going on?"

"Don't worry class." I told them. "Just an unexpected orbital interruption." Honestly, humans were always making such a fuss out of nothing! My tough old BUS could handle this. I turned back to the navigation screen. "Let's just see where we are, shall we?"

Phoebe gasped. "The map! It's gone!" The screen shorted out and then went blank. Oh dear. That wasn't good. I'd just had that fixed…

My students' reactions were predictably, much more dramatic. They all drew a collective gasp.

"We're lost in space!" Ralphie cried.

"WE'RE LOST IN SPACE!"

* * *

"As I always say, there's nothing a good space mechanic can't fix." And I was one of the best. Janet, Liz and I were on the roof, assessing the damage. I had to get her out of the BUS, for some reason the old girl didn't like having Janet onboard. "Wrench." I told Janet, holding out my hand. She placed it in my hand and I set to work. Not much was broken thankfully, more just knocked out of place by the crash. I buried my head in my work, loosening the guard so I could reposition the display interface. "Pliers." I called to Janet, holding out my hand as I finally got the guard free.

"An asteroid… I mean pliers." Janet placed the pliers in my hand. I used them to prop open the interface and called for my screwdriver. It was placed into my hand. I held it backwards so I could scan it with the sonic function.

It appeared as if only navigation memory was shot. So the map was no longer stored it had to be re-learned by the system. Well, at least we had half of it and I knew the rest of the way. And this would give the trip a great spirit of adventure.

"Ms. Frizzle," Tim called up to me as I reconnected the interface. "We've got half of the map now."

"Good, one… more… adjustment…" I wanted to check the readings on the light-speed rockets, they should have been able to compensate for the extra load I wonder why they weren't? Maybe this wasn't the kind of repair to be making right now… it would be easier back on Earth when I had all my other tools…

I looked up in time to see an asteroid headed right for me and Liz.

There was no time to think: Liz jumped in panic and landed on the emergency light-speed boosters button on the back of my jetpack.

"Whoops!" I cried as we shot away from the BUS. The asteroid landed on the roof right where we had been standing but caused no more damage I was sure. The BUS didn't alert me to anything new as it faded into the distance. "Keep your claw on that button, Liz." I told her. "Up… up and away!" We were going on an adventure.

* * *

It only took us a few seconds to clear the asteroid belt. Within a minute we were passing Jupiter. The BUS must've refueled this pack to maximum for me before I'd strapped it on. Good old BUS. As Liz and I shot towards Saturn, I pressed my remote activation emergency programming for the BUS. If I knew me (and really, did anyone know me better?), future me would have traveled to the past to make sure that when this happened, the class would still be able to find me. Now it was up to them to find their way across space to wherever I decided to go. They may not have a map but they had Janet. She knew all the planets. And they were basically aligned so it was a straight shot. Even if they hadn't been, the BUS's gravity sensors would reorient them towards the next planet.

I just hoped they didn't run into any wandering species… or burn out the light-speed rockets, those were expensive to fix.

My light-speed pack was only about half full just as we reached the edge of the solar system but I decided it was best to stay in, navigation would be simpler that way. Plus, I _technically_ wasn't allowed outside of the solar system. I drifted gently down onto the surface of Pluto.

"Well Lizalria, how about we do a little star-gazing?" I asked her as she jumped off of my shoulder. She nodded enthusiastically. I pulled my collapsible telescope out of my pocket and set it up facing out to the stars. "I think I'll be able to find Kasterborous from here, just give me a second…" I swung the high-powered telescope out towards the endless expanse of stars beyond Earth's solar system. It only took me a few minutes to locate the constellation containing my home. "Look Liz, that's where I'm from." I moved aside to let her peer through the lens. "My home planet is right in the center of that constellation, the fires of its center burning with all the force of a star. The soil is a deep, rich red and the trees silver. They glow with the light constantly." Lizalria patted my arm comfortingly. I smiled at her and took the telescope back.

I just stared at Kasterborous for a long time, watching the gas clouds swirl and the fires of my home world burn.

It had been such a long time since I'd just been able to be alone and think like this. Back home, everyone had been breathing down my neck from the moment I saw what I wasn't supposed to. And then there had been the trial and research and preparations and my transport to this system. My spare closet (another room of my wonderful BUS) was still a mess, stuffed with various gadgetry from home and Earth-objects to help me blend in. I'd need to straighten that out soon…

And what about when all this was over? I straightened up at the thought, leaving the image of my home star system burning in my retinas. Would I just pack it all up again and leave? Return home either triumphant or outcast? Would they remember me for this or hate me for this? Was this plan even going to work?

One year. One year and then maybe, maybe I'd be able to finally return. And if I couldn't? Where would I go then?

* * *

It took them some time to find me. Granted, it takes a long time to travel to Pluto without the light-speed rockets operating at full capacity. As I stood gazing out at the stars of Kasterborous, a beam of light swept past me. I looked up. They were here! I waved and abandoned my telescope to greet them.

My poor BUS collapsed as soon as it touched down. Poor thing, it must be exhausted traveling that far in first gear and carrying all that "proof" for Janet. I'd probably need to find a rift and refuel before our next field trip.

The students cheered as they filed out of the BUS and hopped towards me.

"Good work class!" I congratulated them as Tim and Phoebe embraced me. "I knew you'd find us. Right Liz?" Liz jumped eagerly into Phoebe's arms.

"Sure can see the stars from here." Keesha remarked, looking around. "I wonder where the sun is…"

I leaned in next to her and pointed at a small yellow star. "See that tiny star?" I asked her.

She nodded.

"Well," I said. "That's it."

"That's the sun?" Wanda exclaimed.

"No wonder Pluto's so cold and dark, look how far away the sun is!" Tim said.

"So the colder we got… the warmer we got to finding you!" Phoebe told me.

"It was a good hint, if I do say so myself." I admitted. Or at least it would be. Hmmm… it did have a nice ironic confusion to it… now I knew exactly what clues to leave them. I'd also probably have to shut down the isomorphic controls. Oh and the planetarium! I needed to close the planetarium for this whole day to work out. Looks like I had my work cut out for me upon our return to Earth…

The BUS drove up to us and let out a deep sigh. The doors opened and a cascade of Plutonian rocks fell out. Janet poked her head out of the BUS.

"I got enough stuff for _all_ of us to prove we made it to Pluto!" She called to us. How had she fit all that "proof" in there? Surely the BUS hadn't created new closets and rooms for her?

"Well what are you waiting for?" Janet was saying. "Let's go!"

"Are you kidding?" Ralphie asked.

"There's no room in there!" Keesha pointed out.

"Alright, be that way." Janet said. She gathered up an armful of rocks, tossed them inside and shut the doors.

The BUS had had enough. It forcefully ejected Janet and all her accumulated "proof" out of the back door. I'd need to have a word with it later about manners towards our guests.

"There's no way I'm going home without my stuff!" Janet said, perched on top of her pile.

"There's no way I'm going home without you!" Arnold said, hopping over to stand at the bottom of Janet's pile. I backed up and began to fold my telescope into my pocket again but kept my eyes on the students. This could end badly.

"It's proof!" Janet protested. "Nobody will believe me without it!" Well she was probably right about that. Not that I was agreeing with her.

"I'll believe you!"Arnold told Janet. "They'll believe you!" Janet was not satisfied.

Arnold tensed up. "Janet, you want proof? I'll give you proof. Here's proof of what'll happen to you if you stay here with your stuff!"

"Arnold, no!" Janet shouted. I began to run towards them. But not fast enough.

Arnold pulled off his helmet.

Oh dear. That wasn't good.

Where I was frantic however, Janet was positively hysterical. She grabbed her cousin around the middle and dove inside the BUS, screaming at me to get us back to Earth. The rest of the class and Liz rushed on and we were off.

* * *

My concern for Arnold far outweighed my trepidation at revealing the full capabilities of my BUS. I couldn't let the light of his future fade. As a result, we arrived back on Earth in our own time nearly instantaneously so long as one overlooked the time jump. Luckily, I don't think anyone noticed, they were a little too concerned about thawing him out. The nano-genes I had brought along silently went to work on Arnold anyway and as a result, he was all thawed out, good as new within six minutes of returning to the classroom. Unfortunately, the nano-genes, clever as they were, could do nothing for his immune system so Arnold found himself with a rather nasty but not life-threatening, Pluto-frozen induced cold.

Janet kept apologizing profusely and giving Arnold tissues, telling everyone how wrong she had been to try to prove that she'd been in space. I smiled as I stored the glass jar full of Jupiter's storm that she'd collected deep in the recesses of the classroom closet. No, Janet was definitely not one of mine, nor was she a threat to exposing me. But she was still important. I looked forward to teaching her again in the future.

An announcement suddenly came on the PA system as I rejoined the class: "Attention all students, we've just learned that scientists have made their first contact, with an alien from outer space!"

The class began to whisper in confusion and amazement.

I myself was a little surprised. "Oh my…" Had the day finally come? Did I no longer need to hide? It seemed a little early for such an event. Unless, of course…

Before I could finish that thought, Liz leapt off my shoulder and pushed aside a large box on the floor to reveal…

"Ralphie!" The class indicted. He laughed, his jest revealed.

Oh well. Someday it would be time for my identity to be known. Or my year would run out. Whichever came first.

"As I always say class, you're out of this world." They gathered around me and laughed cheerfully, endearingly.

I had a year. This was just the beginning.


	3. For Lunch

**For Lunch**

It had been a month. Arnold still had no confidence. I wanted to test the full capabilities of the new upgrades to the BUS's shielding. What better unit to cover than the human digestive system?

The day began as I finally found my inflatable model of the human digestive system. In the back of the closet of course. And stuck on Lords knows what. Liz tried to help by working the other end free but just ended up with that end stuck in her mouth, her body helplessly tangled in the mess. I really needed to work on clearing that out.

"Ah, good morning class!" I cheerfully greeted Arnold, Wanda, DA, Tim and Ralphie as I left the closet and passed through them on my way to the skeleton, still tugging on the stuck inflatable digestive system. "One digestive system coming up…. yeow!" I yanked as hard as I could and it finally pulled free.

Liz popped out of the closet, the other end of the system flying out of her mouth and into the skeleton's mouth. He swallowed it without complaint and it inflated up to size.

"Now that's more like it!" I said, as the skeleton belched.

"Was that in the lesson plan?" I heard DA ask Wanda.

"As I always say, 'no guts, no digestion'!" I began to set up for the day as Wanda and Arnold continued to talk about breaking the gum chewing record and getting tickets to something called 'Action Mountain'. Apparently though, Arnold had accidentally swallowed the gum, so now they were stuck.

"I'm sorry Wanda," Arnold pleaded. I paused as I heard this, the jar of olives in one hand, the book of records in the other. "I told you breaking records made me nervous, I told you I've never won anything in my life!"

I smiled. Perfect. "Never say never Arnold!" I advised him. I set the jar of olives on the windowsill and winked at Lizalria. Today's lesson would depend on her. She was going to keep Arnold busy while the rest of us explored.

"I told you you should have picked someone else!" Arnold was telling Wanda. I placed the All-School Record Book on my desk and made my way over to the children.

"Hey Arnold, it's okay." Wanda assured him gently. "I mean it's only a ride."

She took down the Action Mountain poster she had hung up over my diagram of the human digestive system. "Well, that's the end of that…" She said, looking at it forlornly.

"Actually Wanda," I said. "It's only the beginning."

"Of what?" She asked.

I grinned. "Our next field trip!"

"Field trip!" Wanda cried excitedly.

"Field trip…" Arnold moaned.

Oh don't worry Arnold, you're going to like this one.

* * *

"Ms. Frizzle, I'd really love to go on a field trip," Arnold told me as we made our way out to the BUS. "but I've got this weird feeling. I mean… I already ruined Wanda's day, what if I ruin everybody elses'?"

Oh Arnold, I don't think you'll ever be capable of that. And today I was going to prove it. I turned back to him as we reached the open doors of the BUS.

"Well Arnold, I do need a volunteer to stay behind…" I told him.

"Stay behind?" He asked, sounding stunned.

Wanda and some of the others rushed past him, eager to see the adventure I had planned this time. "Come on! Let's go!" They shouted as they piled onto the BUS.

"Me! Pick me!" Arnold cried over them, waving his hand in the air enthusiastically.

I smiled. "Well thank you Arnold!" How kind of him.

"Alright! Wait a minute…" He said, suddenly suspicious. "This is too good to be true… what's the catch?" I just smiled brightly at him.

"Meet your substitute teacher." I told him. Liz jumped onto my shoulder wearing a mini-Frizzle wig.

"Liz? Well, could be worse." Arnold said as Liz jumped onto his head.

I climbed into the driver's seat and waved. "See you very soon, Arnold."

With a snap, I closed the BUS doors.

As Arnold walked back towards the school doors, I adjusted the settings, making sure we were ready for our trip. "Our timing should be just about right…" I muttered to myself as I turned the BUS slightly and took aim just over Arnold's left shoulder. He was facing away from us, absorbed in his usual mid-morning snack. I put my hand on the chameleon-circuit lever. Just a few more seconds…

"I don't get it," DA said, pulling me out of my focused state. "I thought we were supposed to answer the question about what happens to the food we eat?"

"Yeah," Tim agreed. "Where are we going?"

I looked back at them and smiled reassuringly. "Not far class, not far at all. Here we go!"

I pulled the lever and we began to shrink. Well, technically it wasn't shrinking, the BUS was just transporting itself to fill a different space, one that was smaller than it was normally. And naturally with all of us inside the BUS, we had to fit into that dimension too so we appeared smaller. But it was simpler to explain by just saying 'we shrank'. That was all I'd ever say if they ever asked.

As we stopped spinning, the BUS let out a cheerful beep and took off into the air. At that precise moment, the bag in Arnold's hand burst open, sending orange puffballs flying into the air. My students cried out and clung to the seats as the BUS shook and rocked in the sudden hailstorm. We flew right into Arnold's palm, along with a handful of the cheezie wheezies. Next second, we were among his teeth. It had all happened so quickly, my students had missed the transition.

"Where are we?" Keesha asked, looking around. Arnold's jaws were making quick work of the cheezie-wheezies. I drove steadily along his tongue, avoiding bits of food as best I could. Not that the BUS couldn't handle it, more that I didn't want to scare my students any more than necessary. I was quite certain that human teeth were not strong enough to crack open the BUS.

"Check out the pink pavement!" Ralphie shouted, noticing Arnold's tongue.

"The walls are dripping!" DA exclaimed as saliva dripped over us. Before I could even think about reaching for the lever, the BUS started the windshield-wipers. Good old BUS.

"You know what Ms. Frizzle," Phoebe piped up as soggy, orange balls hit the windows, "at my old school, we turned back in this kind of weather."

"What are those humungo white things?" Keesha asked as Arnold's teeth continued to grind up the cheezie-wheezies.

"Whoa!" Ralphie exclaimed as we narrowly avoided hitting them. "If you ask me, they're humungo bus-crushers!"

"Actually Ralphie," I said. "they're more like humungo food-crushers!" Well now, I had to set him straight didn't I? Couldn't let them all think I was going to get us killed.

After a moment of stunned silence, DA slowly spoke up. "Wait a minute…" She said as I continued driving down Arnold's tongue. "if that's food…"

"We're either on the weirdest cutting board in the world…" Carlos offered.

"Or in somebody's mouth!" DA realized.

There was a chorus behind me expressing their disgust at this information.

"Bingo!" I said, undeterred. Sometimes learning was messy. I pressed a button and the BUS's monitor descended through the ceiling. "But not just anybody's mouth!" The map on the monitor flickered to life and zoomed in on the mouth area. "Look familiar?" I asked them.

"ARNOLD?"

* * *

Since we were inside the BUS, sounds from the outside did not penetrate. However, even though I was to be exploring his digestive tract, I was not leaving Arnold unsupervised. Honestly, what kind of Teacher does that? Liz had a small microphone attached to her left horn so that I could always check up on Arnold if the need arose. I had also given Liz specific instructions for how to keep Arnold occupied.

Arnold's voice drifted quietly into the receiver in my ear as I tested it: " _Boy it's kind of empty in here… I wonder where they went…_ " It faded away after that, probably because Liz was moving away from him to start her work. I turned the volume down. He had no idea where we were. Time to focus on driving again.

A moment later, a large olive bounced into his mouth. It sent the BUS rolling further back along his tongue. Then he seized it in his teeth and squashed it to bits.

"So the first thing that happens to the food when it gets digested…" DA observed as bits of olive hit the window, "Is the teeth cut and grind it into smaller pieces."

"At my old school," Phoebe said again, "we were never allowed to be digested."

Wow this school really must have been restrictive. Glad I got her out of there.

"Never say never, Phoebe!" I advised her. Words I hoped she'd take to heart for the rest of her life.

We began to slide the rest of the way down Arnold's tongue, headed for the back of the mouth.

"But according to my research… after chewing comes swallowing!" DA said.

I grinned. "I call it, Action-Arnold." I clicked the monitor remote to change the aspect. It now showed detail of Arnold's mouth and the tiny blipping indicator that was us. We were perched precariously at the very back of his throat. "The wildest, scariest, best scream-your-lungs-out ride in the world! Yahoo!"

My students screamed as Arnold swallowed.

* * *

"Class, welcome to the esophagus." I said as we were pushed downward by the esophagus muscles.

"The asparagus?" Carlos asked.

"No Carlos, the esophagus." DA explained, pointing at the monitor. "It's where your food goes after you swallow."

I turned the BUS engine off and leaned back in my seat with a sigh. This trip would be easy on the flight stabilizers for sure.

"Ms. Frizzle," Phoebe said, sounding bewildered. "Wh… what are you doing?"

"Time to let Arnold's digestive system do the driving." I told her.

"Cool!" Wanda said. She dashed to the back of the BUS to look out the window. "It's like we're driving through a tunnel but the tunnel's driving us!"

"Hey Arnold!" Carlos called as he joined her at the window. "How 'bout a push?"

Keesha looked like she was thinking hard. "I wonder if this is how it feels to get squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste…" She said.

"Yeah but I get the feeling we're not going to end up on Arnold's toothbrush." Tim said. He had his sketch pad out and was scribbling away.

"Right you are Tim!" I said. "The esophagus connects the mouth to the…? Anyone?"

Ralphie was looking a little green. "I don't know how much more of this I can stomach…" He moaned.

"Excellent Ralphie!" I exclaimed. Looks like someone had done their homework. "The stomach is the next step in digestion." I clicked the monitor again to zoom in on us. "And it's a real… doozie!"

At that moment, we exited the esophagus and free-fell towards Arnold's stomach. As my students cried out in excitement and fear behind me, I quickly turned the engine on and reset our exterior.

"In just a few moments, we'll be landing in Arnold's stomach." I informed everyone as we sprouted a parachute and floats. "Thank you for flying Digestion Airways."

We drifted downward and landed with a splash.

"Now that's what I call a belly-flop." Carlos joked, making everyone laugh.

Sprouting a sail, we drifted around for awhile, checking out what was happening. It wasn't until we spotted a 'rock' and the walls started moving that I decided it was probably time to move on. No need to spend all day in here when there was so much more to see.

"Hard to port class!" I yelled, spinning the steering wheel sharply.

Everyone gasped as we narrowly avoided what was not a rock, but merely the gum Arnold had swallowed earlier.

"Whew… that was close…" Carlos said as the gum slid past us, leaving us unharmed.

"Is it just me," Ralphie asked, watching the bits of food get broken up and dissolved outside. "or do you get the feeling there's more out there than just food and water?"

"Whatever it is, it's eating the BUS!" Carlos shouted. I could hear the BUS informing me telepathically that the acid outside was indeed slipping through our shields a bit.

"Nothing to worry about, just a little stomach acid." I told my students.

"STOMACH ACID?!" They all sounded concerned, like this was something that could actually hurt us. Although it was fascinating. Human stomach acid was corrosive enough to at least scratch the BUS through the shields. Better not let that information get off of Earth.

Wanda however, seemed very impressed. "Man, when it comes to digestion, Arnold doesn't mess around!"

I grinned. "You haven't seen anything yet." I told her.

At the very back of the BUS, Ralphie was hunched over in the seat, the constant rocking making him nauseous again. "You mean there's more?" He moaned.

I made a noise of affirmation.

"All right Arnold!" Wanda cheered, jumping up in excitement.

I checked up on Arnold through the microphone. He was attempting another record, this time, how many pens he could stuff into his pocket protector. Good, at least Liz was keeping him busy.

"What's that?" Wanda exclaimed, pointing at an enormous pink thing opposite us that was opening and closing.

"Poor Arnold," Keesha lamented. "Looks like he's got a hole in his stomach!"

"Not a hole, Keesha," I corrected her. "A valve." I grinned at her. "The doorway to his small intestine!"

"Yeah well, it just swallowed the gum!" Wanda observed, watching the blue mass vanish.

"Hey, why hasn't the gum been digested?" DA asked.

"A few things are too tough to be broken up and dissolved." I replied.

Phoebe turned away from the window. "Like… school buses… right?" She asked hesitantly.

I turned the wheel, sending us lurching towards the valve. "There's only one way to find out!" Time Lord technology vs. human evolution, I loved it. With a flourish, I reset the chameleon circuit. We spun around several times before becoming a submarine. With a splash, we were rapidly carried out of the stomach and into the small intestine.

Wow, Arnold certainly did have fast metabolism. Good thing I picked him or this would have been a full day field trip. We shot through his small intestine, passing miles of villi.

My students all crowded around the windows, staring in awe out at the landscape around us. "Where are we?" Keesha asked.

"It looks like scuba world!" Tim commented.

"Welcome to the small intestine!" I narrated, "the next step in digestion." The monitor tracked our progress showing us about halfway through Arnold's system. Hmmm, we still had plenty of time…perhaps this would be a great opportunity for an immersive experience…

Oh if only I'd thought to bring…

With a quiet beep, the BUS opened a compartment next to my seat. Inside, was my acid-proof, water-proof, immersive scuba gear. Perfect for navigating a human digestive system.

Frantically, I began searching for buttons. If I knew myself…future me had some planning to do.

"I don't get it." Ralphie said, as I set the BUS to autopilot and began to pull on my scuba suit. "The food's been dissolved, digested, whatever, what else is left to do?"

I pulled my helmet on and secured it tight. "As I always say Ralphie," I replied, starling him, "digested is not delivered!"

My students all stared at me in my gear with expressions of confusion.

"Anyone for a dip?" I asked.

Carlos, Keesha and Wanda's eyes all flickered to the windows then back to me, as if what I was suggesting were completely insane.

But only Phoebe had the inclination to speak. "Go swimming in Arnold's digestive juice?" Phoebe asked, pointing out the window. "Not me, no way!"

* * *

"How was I supposed to know she'd have digestive-juice scuba gear?"

I smiled as I overhead Phoebe's comment to Wanda. Just as I'd suspected, future me had left behind seven suits identical to my own, each helpfully labeled with my student's favorite colors. I was hardly going to let my students miss out on this opportunity.

"Isn't this the coolest?" Wanda cheered. I smiled and swam off to inspect our surroundings. Not bad. And the suits were holding up pretty well. The BUS was certainly doing better now that we were out of the acid pit that was Arnold's stomach.

"Hey, look at this!" Carlos called, pointing to one of the villi. "The dissolved food is disappearing into these…rubber cactus-type things."

"They're called villi." I helpfully supplied, swimming over to where most of my students were gathered.

"Cool!" Ralphie said "They're soaking up the food like a sponge!"

"But where did it go?" Tim asked. He was still working on his sketches, probably drawing a map of where we'd been.

"I can answer that!" Dorothy Anne supplied, swimming over to join us. "According to my research, the villi transport the nutrients into the bloodstream, which carries them all over the body!" She glanced at me. "Isn't that right Ms. Frizzle?"

I nodded. "Very good Dorothy Anne! The villi soak up the dissolved nutrients. That's why there are so many here in the small intestine! Then the bloodstream picks those up and carries the energy all over the body so that we can move and grow."

"I get it!" Ralphie said excitedly, "the bloodstream is like a pizza delivery service! Only it delivers energy!"

"Speaking of energy," Carlos commented, looking around. "Where's Wanda?"

I suddenly realized I only had six students listening to me. One was missing. Oh dear. It seems Wanda had gone off on her own…I knew I should have assigned partners…

A shout drew our attention to something further down the intestine. My mouth fell open in shock. Wanda was being rapidly carried away from us, riding along the top of the ball of gum.

"WANDA!"

* * *

We searched the entire small intestine, swimming through the liquid and calling Wanda's name. But she was nowhere to be found.

I was starting to worry. Maybe in the future I should put tracking devices on all my students to make sure nothing like this happened again. Or make them work with partners…

Finally, after several anxious moments searching, we caught sight of her. She was still riding haphazardly atop the ball of gum. We had not sooner caught sight of her, then she vanished into another valve.

"Ah, she went into the large intestine!" I called, catching up with my students. We were way ahead of schedule, we weren't suppose to reach the large intestine until lunchtime!

"The large intestine?" Tim asked. "You mean there's more?"

Before I could answer him, the walls around us shook and the liquid began to gush past us, buffeting us hard. "What's that?" Tim asked, pointing at a large cloud of darker liquid headed our way.

"Just Arnold's leftovers." I replied, bracing myself.

The BUS came into view, riding the new torrent of waste material. It shot right past us and headed straight into the valve. The rest of us were dragged along by the rush of fluids, tumbling head over heels into the next part of the digestive system.

We all shot out of the valve and into the large intestine. While my students slid into a heap on the rapidly drying floor, I raced ahead to tend to my BUS. It was ruffled, certainly (and more than a little miffed) but my tough old BUS could handle anything.

We changed shape again, seeing as the submarine would be useless in a place like this. My BUS gave me an all-terrain, roofless vehicle with a rather large megaphone on top. Interesting choice.

It had barely finished forming when Carlos raced over and grabbed the microphone.

"this should work!" He raised it to his mouth and called: "Wanda, if you can hear this, give a shout!"

From far away, we heard the unmistakable sound of Wanda's cries.

"Let's go!" Carlos shouted to the others, who were making their way towards the BUS. They all jumped in and I hastily set off down the large intestine.

We rushed through the tubes, going far faster than any Earth vehicle ever could. I pushed the BUS hard, worried about Wanda. How had she gotten so far away so quickly?

"The further we go, the drier it gets…" Keesha observed, watching the walls as we went.

"It looks like the walls are sucking up all the water." Tim agreed.

I swerved sharply to avoid a falling chunk of waste.

"That's the large intestine for you," I told my students, "it removes the water from the leftovers."

"So we have to find Wanda before she gets dried into a raisin!" Carlos proclaimed.

"A raisin…" Ralphie speculated, "Cool!"

He was immediately reprimanded by Dorothy Anna and Keesha and fumbled to correct his statement. "ummm, not cool at all! Terrible actually!"

I spotted something up ahead, something familiar. I slammed on the breaks, skidding along the large intestine and pitching my students forward at the sudden shift in momentum. We ground to a halt a few inches from where Wanda precariously balanced. On top of the wad of gum.

Oh dear…

"Wanda!" My students all shouted, "Don't!"

But it was too late. With a scream, Wanda plummeted downwards, a long, thin piece of the gum clinging stubbornly to her foot. My some miracle of physics and time, the force and elasticity of the gum was enough to slow her momentum and sling her back up the way she came. Wanda shot over our heads, still yelling, still stuck on the gum. If she kept going like this she was in for some nasty whiplash…

Carlos was already moving, tracking Wanda's flight with his eyes. When she reached her lowest point above us, he jumped up, closing his hands around her wrists.

"Gotcha!" Carlos yanked hard, pulling Wanda out of orbit and down on top of him.

"Alright Carlos!" Phoebe congratulated him as the others swarmed around and Wanda collected herself, "you saved her!"

Wanda looked around at all of us incredulously. " _Saved_ me?" She stood up. "I was having a blast! Arnold's digestive system is the wildest, scariest, scream-your-lungs-out ride in the world!"

I knew she'd love it. "And it's not over yet." I added, joining my students.

"We've done the mouth," Ralphie listed, "the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, the large intestine, what could be next? The _extra_ large intestine?"

"No!" I chuckled. "We just have to join the rest of the waste products, and finish the trip." I gestured at the large intestine around us, which was hard at work sucking up water.

There was a collective, disgusted: "WHAT?" from my students.

"Wait a minute," Dorothy Anne said, pawing through one of her ubiquitous books. "According to my research…the waste products go…"

"uh uh!" Ralphie said, shaking his head firmly.

"No way!" Keesha agreed.

"At my old school," Phoebe said, "we were never allowed to end up in the toilet!"

All right, so I hadn't planned the end of this trip very well. But things had gotten away from me. Arnold's digestive system had sent us whirling right to the end, I'd barely had time for my lesson plans. I hadn't figured out exactly how we'd get out, I had just assumed we'd just teleport the BUS outside once we were done. But perhaps it was best not to let my students know the full capabilities of the BUS. Well, not yet anyway.

"Anybody have a better idea?" I asked.

"We could go back to the mouth and ride it again!" Wanda immediately suggested.

"WANDA!" Everyone moaned.

I puzzled this over. Not a bad idea, I'd never considered going back…

Well, why not?

"She's right," Tim spoke up, examining the map he'd been making. "We could go back the way we came. I've been keeping track, and the digestive system is just one long tube divided into parts…"

Tim narrated his observations to the group, planning out a plausible route that would take us back through the small intestine, stomach, esophagus and then out mouth.

"It wont be easy…" He commented.

"You're right Tim." I spoke up, making them all turn around to look at me. "Digestion pushes everything down! We'll have to fight our way back." I smirked and folded my arms. "We might never make it."

"Never say never Ms. Frizzle!" Phoebe countered. Everyone laughed, finding humor in our situation, as difficult as it was. Perhaps I'd made the wrong assumption about how they would react to this. After all, they'd panicked terribly when we'd been lost in space. Maybe they were just getting used to these adventures.

"Alright class," I called, getting their attention at once. "Off we go!"

* * *

Our journey back was just as tough as I had expected. Driving back up the large intestine was quick, if a little slippery. Squeezing through the valve the wrong way did present an issue but extra dimensions do come in handy for small spaces. Back in our submarine form, we assisted the BUS with the journey by pedaling stationary bikes. The last thing I needed after this trip was to refuel again.

"Full speed ahead!" I called to my students as we shot through the small intestine, pedaling hard and going against the current.

"This is insane!" Ralphie declared from the back of the BUS.

"Consider the alternative!" Phoebe reminded him.

"You know," Ralphie said, "biking is my favorite sport."

A few minutes later, we were approaching the stomach valve.

"Now!" I cried, pedaling harder while pressing a button on the dashboard. With a burst of speed from the BUS and my students, we shot through the tight space and back into the stomach.

"So much for the easy part…" I said, wiping my brow as we rose to the surface of the stomach.

"The _easy_ part?" My students exclaimed.

Tim unfurled his map again. "Yeah," he pointed at the esophagus. "remember all the muscle power that pushed us down the esophagus?"

My students all groaned.

Keesha checked her watch "And it's almost noon!" She cried, "if Arnold eats lunch, there's gonna be tons of food raining down on us!"

I stepped off my bike. "Well class," I began, addressing them all casually. "What should we do?"

They all stared at me silently, blinking in confusion. Perhaps I shouldn't have let them know that I had no more idea of how to get us out of this situation than they did.

By this time, Arnold's stomach was contracting and growling loudly. It was nearly lunchtime. And we were still floating around in it. I was beginning to wonder if it would be worth just jumping back outside without bothering to complete the tour. Even with the shields on full, I was worried about that acid. I'd need new enhancements, or maybe even a new exterior remodeling to get rid of the tiny acid stains from this trip. All things not easily found on this Level 5 planet. But I was curious to see how my students would handle this situation. It certainly wouldn't be our last tight spot.

"Ms. Frizzle?"

My musing interrupted, I turned to face the interrupter. "Yes, Wanda?"

She was positively brimming with excitement. "Can you bring back the megaphone that we used back in the large intestine? And make it stronger?"

I raised an eyebrow at her, intrigued. "Stronger?"

She nodded. "So that Arnold can hear it. I'm going to convince him to drink my seltzer so that we can make a gas bubble and float out of here!"

I was astounded but I tried not to show it. They had thought of something I had not. Another way out the same way we got in…

With a few pushes and adjustments, I brought up the speakers again, amplifying them as Wanda had requested.

"Here you go Wanda," I told her as I handed her the microphone. "All set."

Unfortunately, the microphone worked both ways now, which meant that we could now all hear Arnold and Lizalria's private conversation. Arnold's voice filled the BUS.

" _I know!_ " He was saying. " _I could eat Ralphie's lunch and think up a good excuse on a full stomach!"_

"But I had a malloblaster today!" Ralphie hissed as DA shushed him. "He'd better not…!"

"Arnold…" Wanda said into the microphone, the sound echoing.

While Wanda spoke to Arnold through his stomach to carry out her part of the plan, I was busy making all the proper preparations so that it would work. I had to decrease power to the shield to make sure our levitation would work correctly but I was willing to put a few more stains on the BUS to get us out of here at this point.

As the seltzer rained down on us, Wanda gathered everyone to the center of the BUS.

"Now, let's rock the BUS back and forth to create a giant gas bubble!"

They all started rocking, tipping the BUS this way and that. I watched as bubbles began to form, then grow, then gather around us. Finally, we had our very own transparent bubble to surround us. But it wouldn't be enough to lift us. I flipped on the flight stabilizers and twisted the levitation leakage. We began to rise.

"It's working! It's working!" My students cheered.

The gas bubbled carried us up out of the stomach and back into the esophagus. With a few minor enhancements from the BUS, the bubble stayed intact right up until we reached the top of the tube. Then with a mighty belch, Arnold expelled us. We shot straight out the window, due in no part to the excellent proximity sensors on the BUS I was sure.

My students cheered as we spun quickly, returning to normal size. Everyone filed out, glad to be back outside. We made our way back to the classroom, my students talking excitedly.

Just outside the classroom, I nearly tripped over a tray piled high with a very substantial lunch. Hmmm…seems I'd planned behind that our field trip would last until exactly lunch time. I scooped up the tray and we entered the classroom.

Arnold was standing by himself, looking at his watch.

"…I'll never even get to eat lunch!" He was saying.

"Did someone say lunch?" I asked, startling both him and Liz. We all entered the room, me placing the tray before a clearly very hungry Arnold.

He tucked right in, ignoring or not noticing the fact that everyone else in the class was watching him with fascination.

My work here was done, at least for now. I left my students alone to set up the next lesson plan.

After a few minutes, Wanda approached Arnold's desk, clearing her throat slightly to get his attention.

"Congratulations, Arnold." She said, hefting a trophy shaped like a sandwich that she had just made.

"Huh?" Arnold asked, confused.

I watched out of the corner of my eye from the blackboard.

"You just broke the record for being the best field trip ever!" Wanda told him, placing the award in front of him.

"Wh…what?"Arnold asked, still completely lost, his lunch abandoned.

Wanda stared dreamily at the diagram of the digestive system on the board. "And giving me the ride of my dreams!"

Arnold looked around. "You mean, **I** was the field trip?" Everyone nodded.

"Yup." Wanda said.

Arnold stood up. "But… where exactly did you go…?" His stomach let out a loud gurgle. Everyone looked down at it.

"You went… inside?!" He asked, sounding horrified.

All the other students giggled.

Arnold turned towards me and raised one hand. "Ms. Frizzle," he said, his other hand over his heart. "No matter what, I'll never miss another field trip. Never, ever, ever, EVER!"

Well not exactly the change I'd had in mind but good nevertheless. I smiled at him.

"Wonderful Arnold!" I returned to my current task of writing the names of the geologic periods of the Mesozoic on the board. On the back of my new dress was an impressive-looking T-rex.

Arnold gulped. "Starting, right after the next one…" He muttered. We all laughed again as he blushed. Oh Arnold. I can see I have my work cut out for me with you…but your future will be worth it.


	4. Inside Ralphie

Inside Ralphie

It was broadcast day. However, despite the excitement all my students had expressed over this day for the past week, now that the day had come, moral was low and panic reigned.

Why? Ralphie was nowhere to be found.

"We can't do it without him!" Wanda cried.

"And we go on in an hour!" Carlos observed.

"Where is he?" Keesha, Tim and DA all asked, desperately watching the window in case he happened to come running in late.

A phone began ringing from somewhere inside the closet.

I raced towards the noise. "I'll get it!" I sang.

I pulled open the door, surprised that nothing fell out. The inside of this closet was still an unlordly mess. Well, that is what happens when seven rooms are compressed into one, all of them stuffed with objects I had accumulated to help me survive and blend in this year. The BUS was still getting itself settled into this new space, trying to figure out where everything could fit. All the same, I should probably tidy it up in the near future, to help my poor BUS out. Who knows what I'll find tucked away in here?

As the ringing continued, I pulled a shoe out of the way. Hmmm, only one…I'd have to find the other soon, these might be useful in the near future… Tossing that aside, I noticed something green and scaly sticking out from under a French horn and a rubber tube. Moving them aside, I discovered a very dazed and confused Lizalria curled up on the ringing phone.

"I was wondering where you got to…" I crooned to Liz, gently scooping her up in one hand while answering the phone with the other.

"Hello?"

" _Hello, Ms. Frizzle?"_

I remembered this voice. "Yes, Dr. Tennelli!" I greeted her. Ralphie's mother seemed somewhat surprised I had recognized her from her voice alone. I'd need to work on that, humans were very suspicious of my uncanny memory and substantially better hearing it seemed.

" _Uhh…well, I'm calling because, as I'm sure you've noticed…Raphie isn't at school today."_

I listened carefully, occasionally making a sound of understanding or affirmation.

" _I'm afraid he may have caught strep throat from one of my patients last week."_

"Oh? He's sick?" I replied, "Oh poor Ralphie…"

There was a slight tingling sensation on my back, as if someone had just tickled me with a strong gust of wind.

"Why aren't I surprised?" I heard Arnold mutter to himself.

I was pretty sure some of my dresses had an odd habit of changing unexpectedly, making them appear to be moving. It seems there was some kind of flaw in my perception filter, I'd have to look into that.

" _I've put him on bed rest."_ Dr. Tennelli was saying.

"Of course, he must stay in bed!" I replied.

Ralphie's mother made a noise of affirmation. _"Hopefully he'll be back in school tomorrow. Thanks Ms. Frizzle."_

"Yes Dr. Tennelli, thank you for calling! Bye-bye!" I hung up.

"Is Ralphie staying home from school today, Ms. Frizzle?" Arnold asked. Most of my class was lined up behind me, clamoring to hear any news I had.

"Yes, I'm afraid so Arnold." I replied, closing the closet door and walking away.

This news was particularly troubling to Wanda. "What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?" She lamented, grabbing Arnold desperately by his collar and shaking him.

I couldn't have Ralphie missing broadcast day. After all, I was getting a wonderful idea about just what we could cover for our report.

"Why, we're taking school to him, of course!" I announced, drawing the entire classes' attention. Wasn't that obvious? I opened the classroom door. "To the BUS!"

* * *

"Are we doing broadcast day from Ralphie's bedroom?" DA asked as we drove out of the school parking lot and turned towards Ralphie's house.

I nodded. "What better place to take chances, make mistakes…?"

"And it sure is messy!" I heard Carlos whisper in the back.

"Ms. Frizzle," Arnold asked timidly. "Are you _sure_ this isn't a field trip?"

I smiled conspiratorially at him. "What do you think, Arnold?" I pressed a button on the control panel, briefly activating my resident nano-genes. They sprung to action, wiping away every trace of disease on the BUS and giving each of my students a small boost in their immune system. The BUS changed itself into a sterile doctor's vehicle with a pop.

Arnold slumped down in his seat. "I think Ralphie shouldn't have stayed home today…" He moaned.

* * *

The drive to Ralphie's house was short and uneventful, mostly consisting of my students speculating what we would cover. We pulled up outside his house and spilled out of the BUS onto his front lawn. The BUS honked loudly and after a few seconds, Ralphie poked his head out of an upstairs window.

"Hi! We're here!" Everyone shouted.

Ralphie rubbed his eyes, looking confused.

"HALLO!" I called. "Ralphie! We're here!"

He vanished from the window.

"Come along class!" I called to my students, "to Ralphie's room!" Carlos and Keesha took the lead, racing through the small house and up the stairs to a room with a large red 'R' on the door.

"Hi Ralphie!" Carlos called as he opened the door. "How're ya doing?"

"Uhhhhh…" Ralphie articulated, glancing around in confusion as we all entered his bedroom.

"gee," Keesha said, slowly approaching his bedside, "you look terrible." I had to agree. Based on my limited knowledge of human anatomy, he definitely looked pale and tired.

DA pushed past her, all business as she laid out her make-up bag. "Don't worry, I'll have you camera-ready in no time!" She applied powder heavily to his face, making him cough.

"Is it just me?" He asked as the rest of us began setting up our broadcast equipment. "Or is my entire class standing in my room?"

"Aren't you glad to see us?" Carlos asked, checking the focus on camera 1.

I supported a floodlight as Wanda tightened the joints. "We came to do broadcast day!" Wanda told Ralphie.

He smiled. "Really? What a great idea!"

I chuckled. "Now and then I do have them Ralphie." I said, connecting the power and pouring bright light into our reporting space.

"Speaking of great ideas," Keesha began turning to him. "what's yours?"

Ralphie paled even more than he already was. "Mine?" He croaked. "You mean for broadcast day?" His speech dissolved into hacking coughs and he collapsed back on his pillows.

"Oh you better take it easy Ralphie," I cautioned him, walking over and placing a gentle hand on his burning forehead. "Your body is telling you to slooowwwww dowwwnnnnn!"

"But Ms. Frizzle, I cant! We have a show to do!" He protested, sitting up again. "What does my body know anyway?"

I smiled at him. "Oh it knows a lot about the detection, and rejection, of infection, Ralphie!" I pointed at his shirt, which was covered with poorly-rendered planets and star cruisers. The perception filter wobbled slightly and the figures on his shirt began moving: some of the smaller ships attacking the larger cruiser with lasers. I'd really need to adjust that stupid filter if I didn't want it to go crazy.

"Inside you, at this moment, there is action, excitement, adventure!" I declared, now addressing my entire class, including Arnold, who had somehow managed to get himself tangled in a cable.

"Exactly what we need for our show!" Carlos told Dorothy Anne.

"So, what's your idea, Ralphie?" she urged him.

Ralphie faltered again. "ahhh…wellll…." It didn't take long for him to start coughing again. He let out a moan and fell back against the pillows. "what's going on with my body anyway?"

I knew he'd get there eventually. "ahh! That's an excellent question Ralphie!" I declared. I spun on my heel. "Class!" I called, "everyone back to the BUS!"

I marched determinedly out of the room as my students gasped in confusion.

"Ms. Frizzle, we just got here!" Phoebe pointed out.

"Mmmhhh." I acknowledged, herding her and the others out of the room so that Ralphie and Lizalria were left alone. "Single file, please!"

"Wait!" Ralphie called after us. But I didn't reply. We'd be back soon enough.

My class filed diligently back outside and took their seats, still looking very confused.

I snapped the BUS doors shut and set about making adjustments to the interior. Mainly, setting up a connection to the equipment we'd left in Ralphie's bedroom. "Broadcast day" wasn't so much live television as what I planned to pass off as a _very_ well-made class film about illness. But it was a learning experience for them and I wanted it to feel more important than it was.

And it was a monumental day for Tim. I couldn't let this day slip by without putting his first camera in his hands.

"Ms. Frizzle," DA finally asked after several seconds of my mad adjustments to the cockpit controls. "What are we doing?"

I reset the shrinkerscope and seated myself in the pilot's chair. "We're getting the inside story!" I declared, pulling the chameleon circuit.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Arnold asked quietly.

We spun around rapidly several times and then lifted off into the air on a small rotational propeller. Now about the size of a moth, we easily drifted right through Ralphie's open window.

"Wait a minute!" He called, confused. "What's going on?"

I pulled out a megaphone and put the BUS into hover mode.

"Ahh, it was your idea, Ralphie!" I reminded him over the thumping of our propeller. "We're here to get the inside story!"

"Inside story?" He asked. "Inside what? What about broadcast day?"

"Think Ralphie!" I urged him. "Where is all the action right now?"

He still seemed lost. "The action?"

Liz jumped up on his shoulder and held his nose, pulling his head back so his mouth hung open.

"Liz, what are you doing?" He asked, than the light bulb went off. "Hang on a second…"

Liz let go of his nose and smiled at him.

"The action is all inside me!" Ralphie declared. "What a great idea! Broadcast day could be about what's going on inside me!"

I grinned. "Excellent Ralphie," I knew he'd get there eventually. I took a deep breath and yelled into the megaphone: "RRRRRRRRROOOOOLLLLLL TAPE!"

Everyone on board the BUS scrambled to their stations: DA to research, Keesha to inter-BUS reporting, Phoebe, Tim and Carlos to mobile cameras. I watched in the rearview mirror as Tim picked up a camera and placed it on his shoulder, carefully adjusting the eyepiece and white-balance and looking around in wonder as the camera changed its presentation of the world. So far so good.

Several minutes later, we were all set to begin our 'broadcast'.

Ralphie led us in via Liz-cam, describing the scene of our reporting as "a natural disaster of major proportions." He then passed it to Keesha who asked the question I hoped my students would soon find an answer to "what's making Ralphie sick?"

"And to do that," Ralphie finished, "they'll go straight to the trouble zone." He rubbed his throat. "My sore throat."

"Seatbelts everyone!" I called. I was really enjoying getting to say that all the time. I leaned my head out of the BUS window again and addressed our patient through the megaphone. "Ralphie…say ahhh!"

He opened his mouth wide and I hit the shrinkerscope. We shrunk down to fly-size and zoomed right towards the pink target of the roof of Ralphie's mouth. He gulped us down as we reached the back of his throat.

I was careful to avoid the esophagus this time. My students had already seen the digestive system, and we were on a mission!

"The FNN news team is nearing the disaster area." Keesha told our BUS cam as we tipped down the back of Ralphie's throat into his trachea. "In a moment, we will have live footage."

We approached the opening to Ralphie's throat, an enormous pink and red flap of skin that rasped with incoming and outgoing air.

" _SEE ANYTHING YET?"_ Ralphie asked. The act of him speaking made the walls around us shake. My students cried out in surprise and alarm as they were battered around.

It only took me a few seconds to stabilize the BUS against the assault.

"Get a shot of those vocal chords class!" I commanded. Tim hovered over my shoulder, pointing his camera steadily at the moving walls in front of us. My instinct had been right, he was a natural.

"Look how red and swollen his throat is!" He commented.

"No wonder it hurts!" Phoebe agreed, covering her ears against the rasping of Ralphie's breath.

"The question is," Ralphie commented, "why is it red and swollen? And why does it..?" He broke out into a violent fit of coughing. So violent it threw off the stabilizers.

Oh dear.

We bounced around Ralphie's trachea as continuous buffets of wind forced us back…back…

I frantically tried to engage the stabilizers, the gravity-reorienters, anything! But we were caught.

With a hack, we were forcefully expelled out of Ralphie's mouth and flew across the room uncontrollably.

* * *

The gravity sensors kicked in about half a second after we exited Ralphie's mouth. But I could do nothing about the velocity. The stabilizers weren't responding. Oh dear, I certainly hope I wont need to replace them…that gets expensive.

Thankfully, Lizalria reacted quickly enough to stop our momentum. The baseball glove she held out cushioned our fall and the BUS's mechanisms prevented any bodily harm. I upped the safety standards just to be sure.

Liz carried us back to Ralphie as he looked around in confusion for us. She held out the glove to him. Very carefully, he picked us up and placed us on his finger.

"Ralphie!" Wanda chastised him, sticking her head out the BUS window and glaring. "Did you _have_ to cough?"

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, covering up another cough. "I couldn't help it…"

"At this rate we'll never get the inside story of what's making Ralphie sick!" Wanda bemoaned pulling her head back inside. "We've got to find another way in!"

I nodded in agreement. "It's not as easy for us, or germs to get inside the body as you might think."

"Yeah," Ralphie spoke up again. "Skin pretty much covers it." He scratched absentmindedly at a healing strip on his right leg. "How are you going to get the inside story if you cant _get_ inside?"

I was silent, letting my students think. Suddenly Ralphie brightened with realization. "Wait a second…I've got it!" He gently lowered us to rest on his leg, right next to the healing cut.

"Look at this! Is it just me, or does this say: this way in?" He peeled the healing strip back to reveal a small but open wound in his skin.

"It's a short cut!" Carlos joked. "Get it? Short cut?"

"Carlos! Yuck!" The girls replied.

"Excellent observation Carlos!" I congratulated him. He'd hit the nail on the head with that one. "Seatbelts everyone!" I cried and reset the shrinkerscope, sealing all the windows with the same motion. We shrank down to one-one thousandth our original size and splashed down into the pool of slightly congealed blood.

"Wow!" Ralphie exclaimed. Then he turned to the camera: "You saw it first on FNN news! Hey you guys!" He called to us. "The whole world wants to know: now that you've found a way in, how are you gonna get to my throat?"

Wanda recognized that issue too. "Ralphie's right!" She exclaimed. "We're all the way down at the knee!"

The scan of Ralphie's system was nearly complete. My smart old BUS had begun it the moment we touched down in his blood. I adjusted the screens, giving the BUS a telepathic command to translate the scan into graphics rather than Gallifreyian. "Let's see if I can put you in the picture…" Ralphie's form slowly came into focus on the screen. "As I always say: for every trip, there's a road map!" I pressed another button and the scan obediently switched to its visual of Ralphie's circulatory system.

Keesha recognized it instantly. "That's Ralphie's blood stream!"

"Could we travel through his blood stream to get to his throat?" DA asked, her voice bursting with curiosity.

I smiled, glad that someone was on board with my original plan. "Absolutely Dorothy Anne! We'll take the trans-Ralphie highway system! And here we go!" I pulled a few levers and we were off.

The BUS sank slowly through the first few millimeters of blood due to the healing that was already going on. But once we were deep in the blood vessel, the viscosity fell sharply and the BUS's propellers were easily able to move us forwards. We passed through the blood stream, surrounded by massive red walls that kept Ralphie alive and moving and breathing. Marvelous. The human system appeared to be only a simpler, earlier evolutionary system to the binary-vascular system of the Time Lords. This would be easier than I thought!

Ralphie continued his report from his bed, the microphone he was wearing — along with the one attached to Liz's horn — providing me with updates to what he was up to. Just like with Arnold, I had to keep an eye on the student we were examining, didn't I? "This is Ralphie for FNN news," he was saying. "My entire class has just dived deep into my cut! And it doesn't even hurt!"

I turned him down slightly to focus on driving and on the rest of my students. We had reached one of the walls of Ralphie's artery and were now faced with dozens upon dozens of tiny little tubes to choose from.

"What are those?" Tim asked, squinting out the window at them as blood rushed by us.

I braked and stood up to better explain to the class. "Those are tiny, _tiny_ blood vessels. They're all part of the blood stream." Now came the fun part. "Eenie, meenie, minee, mo!" I cried, choosing one of the tiny tubes at random and pulling the lever for the shrinkerscope. We shrunk again, this time to barely the size of a single cell. With this advantage, we drove right into the blood vessel and set off through Ralphie's body.

I hummed some random Earth song I'd studied as we drifted through Ralphie's blood. I confess I didn't remember all the words but the tune was enough.

"Head north, Ms. Frizzle!" Carlos informed me, watching our progress on the scan. We shot out of the blood vessel and into another artery. I hung a sharp left, shouting "yee-ha!" as my students stumbled around and cried out.

"Tim," I called as we straightened out again. "Are you getting this shot?"

He started, the camera having been forgotten in the excitement of the past few minutes. Quickly he picked it up again, turned it on and strode confidently to the front of the BUS. Placing the camera on his shoulder, he angled a perfect shot out the front windows of the BUS, capturing the blood cells streaming by around us. I nearly cried.

The images from Tim's camera were being instantly sent to Ralphie's TV and being recorded by the BUS. It would be helpful later for sure.

" _Is that my blood?_ " Ralphie asked through the headset. With a mental command, I transferred that feed to the main BUS speakers so that my students could hear him as well. " _But, I thought blood was red? That stuff is clear!_ "

"That's right Ralphie!" I replied, speeding up a bit. We were almost at his chest, not too long before we hit the throat now. "The liquid part of the blood _is_ clear."

" _So what are those red things? Are they what make blood look red?_ "

"Scintillating surmise, Ralphie!" I commended him. The BUS had changed the visual feed on our screen to one from the camera Liz was operating in his room. Ralphie peered at us, amazed at what we were showing him.

"According to my research…" Came a voice from behind me. I turned and smiled at Dorothy Anne, already buried in her book on human anatomy from the school library. "They're called red blood cells. And the white ones, are white blood cells!" She finished proudly.

" _But what are those jaggedy things?_ " Ralphie asked.

"Those are platelets." I replied.

"They help the body heal scrapes and cuts." Keesha spoke up, DA pouting as her research was stated for her.

" _But we still don't know what's making me feel sick!"_ Ralphie exclaimed, disappearing off the camera feed. " _And boy do I feel sick!"_

A new, distant voice sounded through the headset. " _RALPHIE! I'M HOME!_ "

I cut the connection instantly, muting it to my students but keeping it in my ears. I knew that voice.

Ralphie's mother was back. Oh dear. I'd have to be very careful about how the rest of this went. Thankfully, if she ever saw this again, she'd think it was just a well-made educational film. We'd just need to be careful about how we proceeded.

I kept half an ear to the conversation as I continued my drive through Ralphie's blood. It seemed Ralphie had successfully hidden the broadcast equipment from his mother and was trying his best to get her to leave the room. But she noticed the feed on the television set and sat down on Ralphie's bed to watch our 'broadcast'. Well, time to get creative about this.

"We're here!" I called to my students as we approached Ralphie's throat tissue.

"We are?" Phoebe asked, peering out the window in confusion. Carlos joined her.

"We're in Ralphie's throat?" He asked.

"There are a lot more white blood cells here!" DA observed.

Wanda pressed her nose against the BUS window, watching the cells squeeze through the throat tissue. "Where are they going?" She asked.

"Looks like they're after something." Tim observed, peeking out from behind his camera.

" _Follow the white blood cells!_ " Ralphie shouted in my ear. I mentally adjusted the output volume. Maybe I should give some of my other students headsets so that _they_ could listen to Ralphie.

"Tantalizing theory, Tim!" I commended my camera man for his observation. Raising my voice slightly, I addressed everyone else. "Hold now class, we're following the white blood cells!" Giving them all half a second to sit back down, I spun the wheel hard and drove right at the wall of the blood vessel. The BUS wriggled and twisted and may have used an additional dimension or two but managed to squeeze through the tight, overlapping walls and into Ralphie's throat tissue proper.

"Now that we're inside Ralphie's throat tissue," I addressed my class, bending over a box of supplies, "Time for some on the spot reporting! Up close, and personal." I picked out two of the specially designed wetsuits my students had used last field trip to great success as well as a liquid-proof camera and microphone. "Keesha, Carlos, Camera 1." I decided. I handed Keesha the gear and returned to rummaging through the box for another set. I already had another pair in mind…now where had I put that new suit?

"Phoebe and…" I glanced up, seeing the second of my new pair pointedly avoiding eye contact with me. That didn't stop me though. "…Arnold! You take Camera 2!" I instructed them, dumping the gear into Arnold's arms.

" _I'm_ the one who should have stayed home today." Arnold moaned as he hefted the pile of gear.

The others I assigned to their predetermined jobs, with a few changes to cover the new absences. Wanda was lead anchor in the news studio (aka, the BUS), and DA was back at the breaking news research station. That only left Tim.

"Now Tim, I have a special job in mind for you…" I said to him. He brightened immediately and stood up to follow me. I led him over to the BUS's elaborate control panel space where all the live camera feeds were being beamed and the output was being sent to Ralphie's television and the BUS's memory. "You're going to be in charge of everything." I told him, gesturing for him to take a seat in front of the enormous display. He looked like he was about to protest but I plopped a headset on him and set about telling him which buttons did what. Tim looked a little overwhelmed but he listened attentively and seemed to be following my instructions.

Ralphie and his mother were talking again but I tuned them out in favor of getting this project underway.

In the few minutes it had taken me to get Tim settled, the others were prepared to begin. My camera crews had suited up and were preparing to disembark. I unscrewed the BUS's floor hatch and sent them on their way, advising them to 'stay together!'. DA pulled on another headset and Wanda seated herself at the main desk. With a silent command from Tim, we began our broadcast in full.

"…And now," Wanda began confidently. "over to Keesha and Carlos, live from the throat!"

" _Ralphie…_ " I heard Dr. Tennelli say in my ear. " _That little girl looks just like your friend Wanda!_ " Well, this could very easily fall apart. Perhaps it would be worth adding a perception filter after all…and I definitely couldn't make any appearances on camera now. Not until she left.

Tim expertly shifted the camera feeds so that Camera 1 came through loud and clear. "Carlos here," Carlos began, talking at the camera Keesha was holding. "We're out here in the throat tissues trying to find out what's going on and…" He paused, then pointed at something to his left. "Hey! What's that?" He swam off, leaving Keesha to hurriedly catch up to him.

Carlos stopped alongside a lovely gathering of several _Streptococcus_ _pyogenes_ , hungrily devouring the throat tissue around them. "Look at that folks!" Carlos cried, barely dodging a pyogenes as it fell upon a cell below him. It rested for a moment, then the cell it was resting on popped. "Have we got us some action here!" Carlos continued as Keesha captured the shot. "Those yellow-green balls are destroying that wall!"

" _What are those green things?_ " Ralphie asked. Oh, if only I could answer him! Thankfully, his mother was there to provide him with a satisfactory answer.

" _Those are bacterial cells! They're actually not unlike the bacteria that are making you sick!_ "

Ralphie sounded horrified. " _THAT'S bacteria and it's making me sick?_ " I caught DA's attention. "Looks like we've got our first breaking news segment!" I told her, relying Ralphie's conversation to her headset. DA quickly typed up a report and ran it to Wanda.

Tim switched cameras as Wanda took DA's report. "This just in folks!" She read. "That's bacteria, and it's making Ralphie sick."

A quick pan over to the research station, where DA was flipping through an enormous encyclopedia. "And according to my research, bacteria are germs." She tore a printed report from the BUS's analyzer and skimmed it hastily. "Once inside our bodies, they can make us sick. Ralphie has a bacterial infection!" She declared.

" _This is it!"_ Ralphie called through the headset. " _The inside story! Bacteria invade throat!"_

" _Is it just me…"_ I heard Dr. Tennelli begin " _or did they say 'Ralphie'_?"

" _No, no_ " Ralphie replied. " _It says here this show's about a guy named… 'Alphie'_ " His voice came through quieter now. " _Ixnay on my amnay_!"

Oh I was going to try Ralphie, but there's only so much I can do.

As evidenced by Carlos' continuing report since he hadn't heard the warning: "The bacteria from Ralphie's throat infection are everywhere! And they're destroying his throat cells!"

Keesha panned over the devastation with a steady hand. Interesting, perhaps she had a future in the movies as well…

"Look!" Carlos called, "here come some white blood cells!" They raced by him so quickly he was forced to spin out of the way. "Wow!"

The white blood cells descended upon the infection, doing exactly what I had anticipated they would do.

"It's throwing stuff at the bacteria!" Carlos observed, swimming closer for a tighter shot. Keesha followed him like a shadow, never wavering in her camera work. They followed a white blood cell as it moved among the infection. When it came upon a bacteria strain covered in antibodies, it snatched it up, absorbing it completely and obliterating it.

Carlos seemed equal parts shocked and amazed. "That…that was incredible! That white blood cell just ate those bacteria!" He swam closer to a thicker part of the infection, trying to get a good look at all the action as more white blood cells spat out antibodies and devoured the marked bacteria. I shifted the BUS a little closer. Didn't want him wandering too far off.

" _That huge battle is going on inside me?"_ Ralphie asked. He coughed violently then hastily added. " _I mean…inside A…Alphie?_ " He coughed again, more violently this time. Oh dear, he was getting worse. We shouldn't keep him up much longer. He needed rest.

Carlos found he may have wandered a little too far into the action for his report. "This battle is raging!" He cried, dodging a white blood cell as it raced past him. "Who's going to win?" Even Keesha seemed to be having trouble keeping up as the camera jostled violently, almost out of her grip.

" _No wonder I'm sick…_ " Ralphie moaned tiredly.

It seemed that Arnold and Phoebe were finally in position to give us some action. As naturally timid as he was, Arnold had steered clear of the action Carlos was covering and had instead crept off to a different area of the throat where the white blood cells had not yet begun their assault.

"Arnold here." He began, Phoebe focusing her camera on him. "On location with the infection." He turned to a small coupling of bacterial cells. "I'm going to try to get an exclusive interview with these two bacteria…" The cells before him stretched, warped, than spat out identical daughter cells. They now totaled four.

Arnold tried to keep up, but quickly realized that the infection was multiplying too fast for us. "Hey guys!" He shouted, waving panicked at Phoebe's camera. "They're multiplying! Help!"

"Bad news guys!" Carlos and Keesha reported in. "The bacteria from the infection are multiplying faster than the white blood cells can gobble them up!"

"We're losing!" Keesha exclaimed. "Let's get out of here!"

My students beat a hasty retreat, swimming back towards the BUS as fast as they could. I was at the control panel, hastily preparing for their unscheduled re-entry. Carlos and Keesha were first, with Phoebe and a positively terrified Arnold not far behind. Wanda and DA helped each of them up through the floor hatch. Chaos reigned for a few minutes as the camera crews stripped off their wetsuits and everyone chattered endlessly, Wanda practically shouting: "whatdowedo? Whatdowedo?"

I was about to remind everyone that we were still "on air" and the story was going on without us when Tim unexpectedly spoke up.

"Guys!" He called, effectively silencing everyone. "The story!"

While everyone else was panicking, Tim had switched back to the dashboard camera and was diligently single-handedly running the whole broadcast. I was impressed.

"Come along class!" I called to everyone. "We've got a story to finish!"

The rest of them scrambled to get back into their places or get out of the way. In the confusion (and because Wanda was still having a little trouble calming down), DA ended up in the anchor seat.

I fiddled with my set of controls as she prepared herself to give an update. I frowned slightly. We had lost the feed to Ralphie's TV. I flipped a few switches, trying to reestablish the connection but it was blocked from the other end. His mother must have turned off the TV. Maybe Ralphie had fallen asleep and she'd finally left? Well, I wouldn't know until Liz got the connection back up and running again…

Like clockwork, the signal crackled, then sprang back into full connection just as DA began her report. Ralphie could see us again. I mentally check the feed in his headset, trying to scope out if Dr. Tennelli was still in the room. I didn't hear anything from his microphone or Liz's. We were alone again. Good.

"Over to me, Dorothy Anne." DA was saying from the newsdesk. "Right now the white blood cells are losing!"

"Certainly looks that way, Dorothy Anne." I commented, glancing out the window behind her. Red blood cells were bursting almost constantly now, the BUS rocking slightly as the onslaught continued.

I was going to have to replace the stabilizers wasn't I?

"They need help!" DA continued, turning back to the camera. "They need back-up support!" She threw herself forward, practically touching the screen to shout her report to our patient. "Ralphie! Did you hear me? Where's our back-up support!?"

" _B…back-up support…?_ " He asked wearily, sounding half-asleep. " _Wh…where do I get that?_ "

I checked my time-piece and saw that, assuming my calculations were correct, the moment was just about upon us. "Not to worry Ralphie," I consoled him. "it's already on its way. Cue the medicine!"

Even as I was speaking, a gush of purple liquid ran through the walls of his bloodstream and into his throat tissue. It washed over and around the BUS, bathing us in the scent of Earth grape shoe polish.

" _Is that the medicine mom gave me earlier?_ " Ralphie asked.

"It sure is Ralphie."

"Look what it's doing!" Keesha called, pointing out the window.

The medicine engulfed the infection, bathing the _Streptococcus_ in its embalming fluid. Several bacterial cells burst or split in half, shuddering in revulsion as the healing concoction did its work.

"it's destroying more bacteria!" Keesha observed as Tim turned a camera to capture the action. "The medicine is giving the white blood cells another chance!"

"And they're throwing out even more of those stick things!" Carlos added as a wave of antibodies and white blood cells passed us. The cells descended upon the weakened bacteria, making quick work of the desolated infection. A swarm of antibodies clouded the BUS.

"Oh those 'stick things' are antibodies!" I clarified for my class, realized I'd never explained what those were. "The white blood cells use them to mark the bacteria!"

The swarm was getting thicker, and a few — well, actually more than a few — were beginning to stick to the exterior.

"I hope this doesn't mean what I think it means…" Arnold said anxiously.

Interesting, it appeared a few of the antibodies had found pseudo-docking ports along the BUS exterior and were sending out a signal to the white blood cells that we were not supposed to be here.

"Oh no!"Arnold cried as a white blood cell swam up to us and then tried to fit itself around us. "Ralphie's antibodies have marked the BUS as bacteria!"

"But we're not bacteria…" Phoebe said as more white blood cells surrounded us and the BUS began to rock from their attack. "We're Ralphie's friends!"

I watched in fascination as the cells began to cover the BUS windows and gnaw on the instruments. "But his white blood cells are doing such a good job," I remarked. "They now recognize us as enemies too!"

"Enemies?" Arnold asked, stepping into the aisle so he could stand in front of me. "But we know what white blood cells _do_ to enemies!"

"That's right Arnold," I told him cheerfully. "They'll try to destroy us!" The key word being try. I wasn't worried. This BUS had survived far worse than some angry cells.

"DESTROY US?" Everyone shouted. Several of them exchanged terrified expression.

I was thrilled. Yet another unexpected discovery. First the stomach acid, now this? "Ah, the wonder…of the human body…" It truly was a feat of evolution.

Arnold was not as excited by the prospect of this discovery as I was.

"RALPHIE!" he shouted, several of his classmates echoing him. "DO SOMETHING!" He ran to the camera and shouted it again, right into the feed.

But it was no use, Ralphie was fast asleep.

* * *

As unconcerned as I was about the whole thing, (did anyone honestly think those cells would make a scratch on a BUS like this?) I decided it would probably be best if Arnold didn't pass out.

"Don't worry class," I told them, shooing them back into their seats. "If they want to destroy us," I smirked. "Ralphie's white blood cells will have to catch us first."

I slammed the BUS into reverse, peeling off the cells trying to munch on us, then gunned it. We shot off through Ralphie's throat, pursued by several of his more aggressive cells.

A ringing sound came from the microphone feed in my ear as I dodged and wove through a field of bacteria and white blood cells. Lizalria was trying hard to wake Ralphie up. Now really Liz, let him get some sleep. He needs it.

"We've gotta get out of Ralphie's throat!" Keesha shouted as more cells joined the first three in hunting us.

"Good thinking Keesha!" I spun the wheel. "When the spot is tight, hang a right!" We slammed into Ralphie's throat tissue wall, once again squeezing between the cells. Five or six extra dimensions later, we wriggled our way into Ralphie's throat from the inside.

I kept moving, not wanting to run into any rouge cells. We travelled up, finally coming to a rest deep in his nasal pharyngeal passages.

"Where are we?" Keesha asked, looking around.

"Are we safe from those white blood cells?" Arnold asked, poking his head over the seat.

I ignored them all for the moment, pulling the BUS up short before the walls closed in around us. It was getting quite tight up here. And I didn't want to risk the stabilizers coming completely undone if I used the shrinkerscope again. Maybe it would be faster if Ralphie could just…

"Tim." I called, inadvertently getting everyone's attention. I may have spoken a bit loudly on account of Lizalria smashing some kind of gong into the feed of the headset Ralphie was wearing. "Could you get camera 4 rolling again please?" I asked Tim, wincing slightly as my ears stopped ringing and Ralphie began to shout through the headset in confusion. Tim dashed over to the control panel and flipped a switch, shooting me a confused look but saying nothing.

I smiled as the camera flickered on. "Ms. Frizzle here with an update on the Ralphie story," I began, mentally turning on one of the screens behind me with a scan of Ralphie's sinuses. "To escape the white blood cells, we've left Ralphie's throat and are now heading up his nasal pharyngeal passages." I indicated the glowing icon on the screen that was our current position.

"The what?" Keesha asked, from where she was operating sound.

DA flipped through her human anatomy text furiously. "According to my research that means…" She paused, looking up at me. "His NOSE?"

"WE'RE UP RALPHIE'S NOSE?!" Wanda shrieked.

My students all made noises of disgust, staring out of the windows with morbid fascination. But I was a little more interested in getting out.

"Of course there's no telling how long we'll have to stay here." I continued to the camera. "Or how long we can stay here…" Then I waited patiently. It was only a matter of time before Ralphie got the hint. And I was pretty sure Liz had already figured it out.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, fine black grains of pepper floated past us.

"Buckle up class!" I called about two seconds before we were violently expelled from Ralphie's nose. We soared across his bed, my students laughing in excitement and landed in a pile of socks. I adjusted the shrinkerscope settings as we landed. "Second floor boy's socks, going up!" We expanded back to a visible size and my students eagerly piled out of the BUS, hugging Liz and high-fiving.

Clutching their broadcast equipment, my students trekked up Ralphie's bed to finish the newscast, Keesha and Carlos climbing up onto his chest for a better shot. Ralphie watched us, lying prone and looking far worse than when we'd first arrived. I panicked briefly, wondering if I'd need to set a few nano-genes on him to ensure that he survived this sickness. But I quickly realized I was fretting too much. If the events of today were any indication, his body was going to keep him healthy for a long time.

"So Ralphie," Keesha asked him, "what do you have to say about today's amazing adventure?"

I climbed up next to him, listening in as my students recapped what they had learned from this broadcast and how Ralphie's body had been working to make him better this whole time. When Ralphie rolled to his side and closed his eyes, I knew it was time to go.

"Come along class…" I whispered as Ralphie yawned and mumbled to himself. We made our way silently back to the BUS, leaving Ralphie in peace at last.

Just as I was about to climb into the BUS, Ralphie murmured something in a dozy voice. "So that's the inside story, isn't it Ms. Frizzle?"

I paused, turning back. "That's the inside story Ralphie." I smiled. "Pretty amazing, don't you think?"

But he didn't answer, he was already fast asleep. I silently signaled Liz to keep an eye on him. She saluted me and hid under his covers. As sure as I was about Ralphie surviving this malady, I couldn't be too careful. His future was apparently too important for me to ignore or let fade.

I watched him through the window as my class settled in. He was out cold, probably already lost in a dream. My little dreamer…

The thought came and suddenly his future blazed out in front of me, like a beacon in the darkness of my time-sense. I shuddered from the force of it, nearly blacking out. Ralphie the dreamer…I'd need to reflect on what this meant when I was alone. But it seems my path for him was finally clear.

I blinked rapidly to clear my mind and focus on the present again. Wanda and Carlos were still settling into their seats. My fit had only lasted a few seconds. No one had noticed.

"We may have won the battle class," I told them, "but he's still fighting the war."

I closed the BUS doors and we took off to head back to school.

"Hey guys, how's this for a concept?" Wanda asked as we flew out of Ralphie's open window. "Inside Ralphie: the series!"

She went on to list several possible maladies that Ralphie could come down with, all so that we could further explore. But I was only half listening, preoccupied with my thoughts.

 _She sure is interested in sicknesses…_ I thought to myself. _And she was very enthusiastic about anatomy when we explored the digestive system…_ Another light blazed across my time-sense, Wanda's this time, disorienting me entirely. Rather than Ralphie's light which had merely shone a little brighter, Wanda's expanded like a supernova. With a future that encompassed so much…including another future of one of my student's…the two lights intertwined deeply, practically becoming one bright bonfire of a future…

"Ms. Frizzle?" Phoebe called, seeming concerned. "Are you alright?"

I realized the BUS was bucking a little. My current episode had knocked me so far out of the present that we were tumbling around like a leaf.

I smiled at them all and righted the BUS instantly. "Perfectly fine Phoebe, just a little unexpected turbulence."

They all believed me, they always did, and they returned to plotting out whatever concept Wanda had been pitching them.

But the whole way back to school, I was careful to avoid thinking too much about any possible new revelations about their futures. We didn't need to fall out of the sky. But I went over what I did know based on what I had already done.

Tim needed to pick up a camera (done), Arnold needed confidence (working on it), Carlos needed direction (but which way?), DA needed research (on what, I had no idea), Phoebe needed… (well, I was still working on her), Keesha needed connections (whatever that meant), Ralphie needed dreams (I suppose that meant imagination) and Wanda needed…someone. One of them.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror, watching my students laugh and talk amongst themselves. My eyes slid to Wanda who was talking animatedly to Arnold and Keesha.

One of her fellow classmates was going to play a huge part in her future. But which one? She was already close to Arnold, so perhaps him? Or maybe Phoebe? The two of them could be good friends, given the proper chance.

But my time-sense offered no easy answer and I was too concerned about another blackout to ponder it too much further.

As it had in the past, time would tell me exactly what my students needed.

Or I would fail and return home to face execution.


	5. Gets Eaten

**Gets eaten**

If there was one thing I absolutely loved about Earth, it was the sun. The primitiveness of its middle-aged light was comforting and relaxing. My skin simply loved the warm rays. I could easily spend an entire day just sitting in it and soaking it in, pretending I was back home. Or somewhere other than Earth.

Alas, I had no time for such relaxation.

"Good morning class!" I called as I entered the classroom hefting several books on Earth's ocean, a bag full of science instruments and of course the iconic swimming tube. Every book said it was a staple of a day at the beach. And even though I had no intention of using it, one had to keep up appearances.

"Good morning Ms. Frizzle!" My assembled class replied, sitting in their seats. Good, they were all here on time. Ralphie had taken three days to recover from his bout of strep throat but he came back better than ever, if a little hoarse. Carlos had finally stopped running in just before the bell and Wanda had learned to sit down when it was time for the day to begin.

"We have an exciting day ahead of us," I reminded them, leaning down to scratch at Lizalria's chin. "haven't we?"

"Hang ten you guys!" Wanda shouted, throwing her arms up in the air. I smiled at her as I placed my things down behind my desk. Looking at her for too long still gave me that nagging sense in the back of my mind that I was missing something. It was infuriating.

After nearly passing out following my revelations about Wanda's future, I decided it might be a good idea to focus on partner projects for a while. That way I might be able to better identify just whose future hers was so intertwined with and push them together. And why not solve the mystery of Keesha's "connections" that were apparently so important to her future at the same time? I hadn't been paying nearly enough attention to my female students of late.

So I assigned my class a project in pairs to break up their usual partnerships, placing Wanda with Tim, Phoebe with Ralphie, Carlos with (a very begrudging) DA, and Keesha with Arnold.

Their job was to provide us with two beach things that go together. I had hoped the assignment would reveal both a clue about Keesha's "connections", and either confirm or deny Tim as Wanda's future partner. I was pretty sure he wasn't — his future had begun to expand more towards DA's whenever I looked these days — but I had to start somewhere.

Plus I had a sinking suspicion that several more of their futures might intertwine in similar fashions. Best to know now before I started pushing the wrong ones together. Nothing like doing the wrong kind of work.

"…and the first thing on the agenda…" I continued, walking around my desk to stand in front of them. "is your 'two beach things that go together reports'!"

"…then again, maybe she wont…" I heard Keesha say quietly.

I glanced around the room, trying to decide who to start with. "hmmm, let's start with…Ralphie and Phoebe!" I called. Both Keesha and Arnold breathed identical sighs of relief behind me as Phoebe pulled out a potted dune grass plant and Ralphie inflated a yellow balloon and held it above his head.

"Why the sun and dune grass go together," He began, "by us! All rights reserved."

The two of them gave a concise report on how the sun fed the plant life on their planet. Astounding that most of the entire planet relied entirely on their feeble, middle-aged star.

"No sun, no nothing!" Ralphie finished, letting go of the balloon. I watched it as it zipped around the room, narrowly avoiding Liz's horns as she ducked. Well, their report was accurate as far as humans knew. Truth be told, even if the sun were destroyed, _some_ of the life on this planet would expire. Just not _all_ of it.

The balloon reached the apex of its journey and fell with a plop in front of Keesha and Arnold.

"ahh, Keesha and Arnold, why don't you go next?" I recommended. They both stiffened, seeming terrified. My suspicions were aroused. Perhaps they were not a good pair after all. The reports were designed not only to see how well they worked together but to teach them to build trust in their partners. The other partners had to provide what they had promised and collaborate to make their reports. Truly an exercise in trust. One couldn't expect to do the whole thing alone, no matter what DA vowed when she thought I was out of earshot.

Keesha slowly turned to face me, holding a sandwich in a bag. Arnold hid his face in his hands.

"ummm…yes, we…we brought this nutritious tuna fish sandwich…" She began.

Still covering his eyes, Arnold reached under his desk and pulled out a plastic bag crammed with his algae-covered shoe. He held it up for my inspection.

"And this delightful green scum!" Keesha continued.

I was impressed, apparently they had planned this better than I thought. "You did? Why that is absolutely fantastic!"

They seemed surprised. "It is?" They glanced at their items, contemplating my words.

"So tell us what the connection is," I urged them. "Between delightful green scum and a nutritious tuna fish sandwich?"

Keesha stuttered, struggling to find words. "Ummm…they…they…they both have…ummm"

"Adjectives?" Arnold offered hesitantly. His classmates giggled.

A shrill ringing interrupted their report. My alarm was ringing. An entire hour early. The skeleton in the corner shifted, slamming his hand down on the button to silence the alarm.

"Hold that thought…" I told Keesha as I pondered the implications of this. "It's time to go to the beach! Oh but don't worry," I assured the rest of my class, "we'll finish your reports when we get back! Line up by the door please!"

Everyone rushed to the door, Wanda jostling Carlos and Ralphie out of the way to be first in line. Keesha and Arnold hung back, slowly tucking their sandwich and shoe into their bags.

"Saved by the bell!" Keesha muttered under her breath to Arnold.

"Yeah," he agreed. "I never thought I'd be _glad_ to go on a field trip…"

I grinned to myself. It seems that Keesha and Arnold needed a little more time to pull their fantastic report together and future me was giving them a chance to do this. Maybe today could be a little more than just your average Earth day at the beach…

"Come along class!" I called. "If you don't want to miss the tide, go with the flow!"

* * *

We drove out of the school and made our way to the limits of Walkerville. The BUS knew the route to the ocean side and sent me telepathic directions to the secluded stretch of sand we'd picked out for today.

My class was talkative for awhile as we left school but grew more and more quiet as the city faded away and we passed by farms and pasture. Wanda kept restlessly sitting up, glancing over my shoulder to see if we were there yet. Phoebe kept pulling her back down, gently reminding her to put her seatbelt on. I check my time-sense but it offered nothing regarding their relationship. Perhaps it was too soon to tell?

Keesha and Arnold were sitting together near the back of the BUS, their heads together conspiratorially and their report out on their laps.

"Now concentrate," I heard Keesha say to Arnold holding up her sandwich. "How does your scum, go with my sandwich?"

I chuckled. "You know class," I called, addressing everyone "this trip just might give you the answer you're looking for!"

"I wonder if she knows we don't know…" Keesha muttered to Arnold.

"She knows _everything_." Arnold replied.

"Well…not exactly everything…" Just what I overheard with my better-than average hearing and their not-as-private-as-they-thought conversation. "it's your job as scientists to look for connections!"

I almost felt Keesha perk up at that. "Connections?" Keesha asked and her future glowed brighter before me. "You mean how things go together?"

I smiled. "Exactly!" I turned around to glance at her, watching her future shift minutely before my time-sense. She was on the right track but apparently that didn't mean any more of her future was set in stone. Frustrated — but hiding it from my students of course — I continued the drive, pulling into the secluded inlet Lizalria and I had picked for this day.

"We're here!" I informed my students. "everybody out!" Carlos, Ralphie, Phoebe, and Wanda didn't need to be told twice. They dashed out the doors of the BUS, leaving the rest of the class to follow.

I sat back and watched, Lizalria climbing onto the back of my seat as the class fanned out across the beach and explored the wildlife around them.

"Oh Liz, this gets more complicated every day." I told her as Phoebe and Ralphie examined the dune grass growing among the mounds of sand. I still knew nothing about them and where they were supposed to be headed. For all I knew, their futures were intertwined. Further away, Dorothy Anne was watching the sand, probably examining a crab. Her future was still only a dull flicker to me, a confusing mess of hypotheses and facts that refused to make any kind of sense. "I don't know if I have enough time…" Liz patted my shoulder reassuringly. But mature as she was for a Silurian toddler, she couldn't understand the pressure I was under. Time was crawling by on this planet but I still couldn't help feeling like a year wouldn't be long enough. My time-sense was weaker in this body than it had been in my last regeneration. If the Council had let me keep that body like I requested, I probably could have had this all figured out by now. But Gallifrey law is absolute and those found guilty must regenerate so…here I was.

I ran a hand through my frizzy hair then down my neck and shoulders to my dual heartbeats pounding away within my chest. I'd never examined this body the way I had my past ones. This one was only temporary, a costume to wear for a year before discarding forever. I couldn't get attached to it, as magnificent as it was. It was just bad luck that the costume was impeding my ability to accomplish my goal. For about the hundredth time I asked myself… _why?_

The class seemed to be enjoying themselves and learning many new things by watching the shore life. A passing thought about Rachel crossed my mind before I reminded myself she was dead by this time. Perhaps I'd dig out a few of her old works in the near future to reminisce. I owed her that much. My gaze shifted to where Keesha and Arnold sat forlornly on a rock, missing out on all the action and connections to be spotted by the incredible web of life of the beach. I frowned. This wouldn't do. Keesha needed more exposure if I was to make any sense of her latest clue. They needed more than this surface exploration.

I ducked under the control panel of the BUS, fiddling with the several storage cabinets and throwing several odd objects across the space. Given future-me's track record with supplying all the necessary equipment for adventures thus far, I could only image that they were around here somewhere…

My hands met something round within the depths of a storage cabinet and I grinned.

"Liz, pack the rest of that away!" I called to her, gesturing to the sizable pile of things I had displaced and seating myself behind the wheel once again. "We're about to get up close and personal with some marine wildlife!"

Liz shrugged but moved to obey me, sweeping the whole pile towards the rear door where the BUS opened up a momentary hallway back to my classroom closet. The pile tumbled through, crashing noisily into the interior of the closet and the doorway snapped shut, once again becoming an emergency exit of my vehicle. I drove the BUS a little closer to where my students had congregated, the BUS letting out a beeping noise to catch their attention. I opened the doors.

"Ready to explore this environment…in a bit more depth?" I asked, gesturing for them all to climb back onboard.

"Huh?"

"Now?"

"But we just got here!"

You'd think they'd be used to my spur-of-the-moment changes by now but every time without fail, they all seemed surprised. I merely shrugged and waved them back to their seats.

Keesha and Arnold boarded last, Keesha practically dragging her partner onboard. I pulled the doors shut behind them.

"Seatbelts, everyone!" I revved the engine and reset the chameleon circuit. The BUS eagerly responded, sick of being such a slow Earth vehicle for so long. "H-2-Oh, here we go!" I laughed in delight as the BUS rocketed off the edge of a nearby cliff, not even bothering to stay Earth-bound for the last few meters of the drive. Mid-air, my programming kicked in and the BUS reformed itself into a water vehicle based on the Earth marine mammal known as dolphins that I had seen in one of my books.

My students were silent the whole time, finally trusting that I wasn't leading them into danger it seemed. As we crested our jump and dove down towards the surface of the sea, I glanced in my rear-view mirror at Keesha. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in pure delight, gazing out at the expanse of blue we were about to lose ourselves in.

My time-sense flashed, a small revelation breaking through the darkness of the past week. The ocean…Keesha was going to need to understand the ocean. It wasn't pivotal but it was important. Well, it was something at least.

"How refreshing!"

* * *

"Anchors away, my class!" I sang cheerfully as we dove through the waves and into deeper waters. "Anchors away!" I'd studied up on sea shanties for this trip. Had to make my human disguise seem more credible somehow.

I pulled the chameleon circuit and the BUS obediently changed into a glass-bottomed boat and settled itself on the surface. The students peered through the floor, Carlos pointed out interesting sea life and Tim pulling out his sketch book.

Keesha and Arnold however, were still wrapped up in their report.

"Think Arnold, think!" Keesha hissed at him, holding his algae-covered shoe.

"I cant!" He replied, wriggling his toes. "I hate it when my socks get wet! Can I have my shoe back?"

"No way!" Keesha snapped at him. "We need it for our report!"

I listened carefully as I dug inside my expandable duffle for some of the equipment I had brought with me.

"Ooh, look! There's some seaweed!" Wanda called, drawing everyone's attention. They gazed through the glass, marveling at the ocean life under them in all its briny, bright-colored glory.

"What are those?" Tim asked, pointing at spiky, bright-red balls dotting the rocks below. He'd already sketched two of them in his notebook. "They're beautiful!"

The books had mentioned these. "Those are sea urchins Tim!" I told him. "They eat seaweed."

"And sea otters eat them!" Ralphie said, pointing at a long, slim furry creature swimming around below us. The otter snatched an orange urchin and a flat rock and kicked towards the surface. It came up several feet away from us and began pounding the urchin on the rock, trying to crack it open.

Carlos grinned devilishly. "Do you really think they…. _ **otter**_?" He quipped.

Ralphie shook his head. "Bad Carlos."

I thought it was actually quite good.

Arnold sighed heavily, gazing blankly at the waves licking the side of the BUS. I spotted something through the glass and quickly called out to him.

"Are you looking Arnold?" I urged him, pointing towards the coming cloud of algae. "What do you see down there?"

"Well, I'm trying hard to look for connections, just as you said…" He leaned over the glass bottom. "but I cant see past all that…green stuff."

The algae had indeed spread across our view of the ocean floor, twisting and congealing to the underside of the BUS. We must have been sitting in a thick soup of it.

"Yuck," Wanda spoke up, "it's gone all scummy!"

Arnold sat up, quickly. "did you say scummy? That's it!" He poked Keesha and leaned over the glass bottom again. "Look Keesha! Scum!"

She leaned over the bottom as well, watching the cloud of algae float by under us.

I reached for my net, which Lizalria had unwisely chosen to curl up on. I tugged it free, sending her rolling off of the pilot's seat.

"Excellent observation, Arnold!" I swung the net through the water, catching some algae within. "This scum is called phytoplankton." I informed them, bringing the net into the BUS for their inspection.

"Phyto-plankton?" Arnold asked, puzzled as I held the net aloft.

"Phytoplankton!" Keesha corrected him, stumbling slightly over the long word.

"Phy-to-plankton!" Wanda called, testing the name out for herself.

"Yes, little tiny plants." I informed them as Carlos leaned in for a closer look, wrinkling his nose.

"Wait a second," Keesha asked as Arnold pulled out his dirty sneaker again to examine it. "Does that mean the scum on Arnold's show is some kind of…phytoplankton?" She peered at the scum.

Liz tapped me, holding out one of my latest inventions I'd scrapped together from spare parts found in the back of the closet. "care to try my marvelous, mega-magnifier, mayhaps?" I asked Keesha, holding out the extendable magnifying glasses. She took them and peered between the scum from the ocean and the scum from Arnold's shoe.

"Not exactly the same," She commented, "but not far off."

I settled back behind the BUS's wheel, Liz leaping up on the seat behind me. "What do you think, Keesha? Should we take a closer look?" Oh, I did love asking that question!

"Sure! Why not?" Keesha replied smiling.

Arnold immediately latched onto her shoulder, his voice shaking as he stammered: "No Keesha, you don't know what you're saying…!" I stretched and cracked my fingers, mentally reminding myself where everything was that we were going to need.

"I know that tone of voice!" Arnold continued hastily. "It means something weird is going to happen!"

"YAHOO!" I cried, pushing a button. The shrinkerscope kicked in, transporting us into the size of phytoplankton and turning the BUS into a submersible, pressurized vehicle. We dove under the surface and began sinking among the brine and the microscopic plant life. As we descended, I hit another button and a fine dust began to sprinkle unseen over my students, transforming their everyday clothing into their very own wetsuits. I was very glad I'd finally found that powder in my closet, it would make any outfit changes necessary so much faster!

"Did we just shrink?" Arnold asked quietly.

"We did." I replied, finishing up my adjustments and making sure we were far enough away from the surface that no diving gull or sea bird was going to carry us off. "We are now as tiny as phytoplankton." I informed my class as Arnold buried his face in his hands.

"And that's seriously tiny!" Tim exclaimed. I was glad to see he had his sketch book out already and was diligently drawing the forms in the water around us. Wanda nudged him from her seat beside him and he guiltily turned back to face front. I stretched my time-sense but…nothing.

"Class," I spoke up as the BUS began lowering the specially-designed helmets down for all of my students that I'd uncovered in the storage compartment earlier. "You will notice that the BUS is equipping each of us with a specially designed underwater breathing mask." I crouched on the floor next to a newly-formed escape hatch, twisting the pressure lock to loosen it. "So, get messy! Make mistakes! Get out there and explore!" I commanded them, throwing the hatch open. The BUS stabilized the pressure, keeping us nice and dry inside.

"I'll go first!" Wanda volunteered, barely checking to make sure her helmet was secure before leaping out of her seat and diving into the hatch. Ralphie and Phoebe weren't far behind her.

"This is so cool!" I heard Ralphie exclaim over the communicators inside the helmets.

"And so wet!" Arnold muttered, shifting back and forth before the hole.

Tim slid around him and dropped through the hole. "wow!" I heard him say.

Only Keesha and Arnold were left onboard. "And remember," I told them, scooping up Liz to help her fit her very own helmet on. "Look for connections!"

Keesha nodded determinedly. "Got it!" She leapt into the hatch. Arnold regarded the hatch uneasily for a moment, glanced briefly at me and then took a deep breath and jumped in.

"Ready Liz?" I asked my companion, sealing her helmet in place. She gave me a thumbs up and we dove into the ocean.

I have always been a big fan of learning by exploration. That's what got me interested in teaching in the first place. After all, hadn't it been exploration that had helped me uncover my time-sense?

I let my students wander as Liz and I took a short swim. Tim was sketching again, taking full advantage of the waterproof pad I'd accidentally left in his desk for this day. He was discussing with DA and Ralphie the difference that size made in their perspective of their surroundings. Arnold was sitting on the hood of the BUS, discussing with his partner how they were going to find the connections they needed in this soup of phytoplankton. Liz and I did a large, back-stroking lap around the BUS, relishing in the feeling of near-weightlessness. It wasn't quite space but it was still nice. I stopped halfway through a lap and just floated, thinking. Today was a nice day. Even if I learned nothing, my students would still get a lot out of today. Right?

A shout from Dorothy Anne sent my time-sense racing forward. I snapped to attention and made a break for the BUS, Liz hot on my tail. A group of zooplankton had entered the phytoplankton forest, feasting on the bite-sized green plants. I just hoped they wouldn't stumble across a bite-sized student, I still needed 8 of those.

The BUS threw open the hatch for me and I wriggled in, the anti-drying features wicking the water from me as I crossed to the control panel and took control. Liz wriggled in and slammed the hatch shut.

I took off after a zooplankton, my eyes on a small, multicolored bunch of students swimming as fast as they could away from their chaser.

"Is it my imagination, or do they look hungry?" Ralphie asked, his voice crackling slightly through the BUS speakers.

Mentally, I checked what the BUS had for quick retrievals: vacuum, hose, funnel, net…ah! Perfect.

"It's not just you Ralphie." I said over the intercom as I maneuvered the BUS for a 90 degree rescue swipe. "These bigger creatures _are_ eating the phytoplankton! So, as I always say, it's better to be in the BUS…" I extended the net, aiming carefully for the moment we would intercept my students. The BUS slid smoothly by, scooping everyone into the net just as the zooplankton tried to take a bite out of them. "than in something else!" I finished triumphantly. Especially if you were going to be in the BUS, in something else.

Liz and I high-fived as the BUS pulled the net back inside, momentarily compressing both net and my students through several dimensions so that the whole load could fit through the hatch.

"Ah, Nature never ceases to amaze me!" I threw over my shoulder as my students hung there incased in the large net. The net retracted, opening up its bottom to spill my students onto the floor of the BUS.

"Whew!" Arnold breathed as he removed his helmet. "We were nearly lunch at first sight!"

"Just your average day at the beach with the Frizz!" Carlos stated, smiling. My hand twitched as I considered my new changes to the shrinkerscope settings. Average day…already they were so…comfortable with me.

I shook the thought off. "Okay, BUS, do your stuff!" Our dimension shifted and stretched just enough that zooplankton would no longer consider us edible. "Congratulations!" I informed my students, "we are now the size of zooplankton!"

"Zooplankton?" Keesha inquired, leaning forward in her seat. "I wonder if that's what just tried to eat us."

I nodded enthusiastically. She really was taking to this ocean information very well, getting ever closer to the connection she needed (I hoped). "Very good Keesha! Zooplankton eat phytoplankton! Zooplankton are tiny animals that live in the water." I spun the BUS towards a thick swarm of zooplankton, gesturing for my students to put their helmets back on. "This way, class. We've got to take chances. Get messy!"

"Get eaten…" Arnold moaned as he slid into the exit hatch.

"and don't forget to look for connections!" I called out after them, pulling on my own helmet.

We swam together as a pack this time. I didn't want another unsuspecting creature to try to gobble up one of my students.

Keesha swam up next to me as we explored. "But Ms. Frizzle, this is a big ocean…" she pointed out. "We'll never find a connection between scum and a tuna fish sandwich!"

That was no way to think about the problem. "Of course you will Keesha." I assured her. "Stay with your partner!"

My students spread out, interacting with the zooplankton and making observations. I stayed close to them this time, keeping all of them within easy rescuing distance to avoid last time's close call.

"Good observation Tim!" I complimented him as he commented that the zooplankton seemed less diverse than the phytoplankton. "What else do you notice? Anyone?" At that moment, several _Engraulis encrasicolus_ darted through the swarm of zooplankton, their silver sides flashing.

Phoebe pointed at them. "Those giant things…" she said, her voice shaking.

I grinned. "Very good Phoebe! Those giant things are anchovies!" We watched them dart around, circling within their little school. "They're a kind of fish."

"Anchovies?" Ralphie asked. He was floating by himself a little ways away. "You mean the salty things my dad puts on his pizza when he doesn't want me to eat it?"

I was about to respond when my time sense flared. Ralphie's future blinked out, just for a second and I reacted blindly. With the boosters built into my wetsuit, I was at his side in less time than it took to blink.

"You might not like anchovies, Ralphie," I told him, barely snatching him from the mouth of a hungry fish. "But they might like you…" I pulled him along by the hand as we beat a hasty retreat, more of the anchovies snapping at Wanda and Carlos, who darted away. I'd have to be more careful letting them wander around like this. Maybe it would be better to stay in the BUS. After all, if the BUS was eaten, no problem. If one of them was eaten…I'd be facing worse than regeneration back home…

"I wonder if that's because we're the size of zooplankton…" Keesha suggested as we swam for safer waters.

"Keesha's right class." I told everyone as we gathered into a clump below where the anchovies were feeding. One of them chomped down on a crab-like zooplankton, swallowing it whole. "As you can see, anchovies eat zooplankton."

My students watched in fascination as the anchovies fed, darting through the forest of zooplankton and phytoplankton to snatch tasty tidbits from the water.

"Can anyone guess where this is leading?" I asked after a moment.

"To lunch?" Ralphie suggested hopefully.

No better segue then that, I suppose. "Precisely. Alright everyone, back in the BUS!"

With a mental command, the BUS sucked us all back inside with the vacuum hose, spitting me back in the cockpit first, followed quickly by my eight students and Liz.

I crossed to the controls and rubbed my hands together. "Ready, BUS?" I adjusted the shrinkerscope again and we stretched and shifted a few dimensions. My students cried out in joy this time, clearly starting to enjoy the sensation of their forms taking up different dimensions. "Well done!" I crooned to the BUS as we reached our set size. "We are now the size of an anchovy!" We swam straight through the school of fish, all of them looking bored by us now that we were their size. "I suggest we stay in the BUS while we have our lunch."

"But there's so much to see out there!" Wanda exclaimed standing at my shoulder, her hand pressed against the BUS window.

"Ahh, excellent observation, Wanda." As much as there was to see, I didn't want them wandering around outside anymore. After Ralphie's close call with an anchovy, I wasn't taking any chances. If we were going to get eaten, we'd get eaten in the BUS. That way our safety was guaranteed.

"At my old school," Phoebe said, handing Lizalria a cracker from her lunch box. "We always had to stay in the bus if we ate lunch in the ocean."

My students dug into their lunches, except for the pair at the back. Arnold and Keesha had the pieces of their report together again and they were conferring. I kept my eyes on the water before us. They'd get it soon. It was only a matter of time…

Keesha turned across the aisle to DA, asking to see one of her books.

Something darkened the scanner and I looked up just as several _Thunnus alalunga_ came into view by the windows. What perfect timing! One of them snatched up a mouthful of anchovies.

"I've got it!" Keesha called suddenly. "I got the connection!"

I smiled, turning to face her. She finally found her connections it seemed. I flexed my time sense but…nothing. Really?

Keesha walked excitedly to the front of the BUS, ready to share her eureka moment. "What eats phytoplankton?" She began, addressing her still lost classmates. "Zooplankton! And what eats zooplankton? Little fish like anchovies!" A dark shadow fell over the BUS and Liz hopped onto my shoulders, cowering as the large tuna swam right at us, opening its mouth wide…

Keesha remained oblivious to the irony of her delivery. "And what eats little fish like anchovies? Well…?"

"TUNA FISH!" The others cried, screaming as the blue throat of the albacore tuna swallowed us whole. Keesha whirled around, took one look at where we were and promptly joined the chorus of screams.

Well, at least my caution had paid off.

* * *

"I knew I should have stayed home today…" Arnold moaned.

I ignored him. "Class," I announced. "We are now inside an albacore tuna!" Well, barely inside. We were sitting just behind the gills, barely at the back of the fish's mouth.

My class didn't seem too thrilled by the realization that we'd just become a part of the food chain.

Except for Keesha. Once she'd gotten over her initial fear of getting eaten by the kin of the fish in her sandwich, she'd been practically bouncing around the BUS, ecstatic about her new connection. "Cheer up Arnold!" She advised him, pulling his gaze away from the window. "We're off the hook! We know how your scum and my tuna fish sandwich are connected."

I watched carefully as Keesha explained the connections she'd discovered once again while we were swimming around in the ocean.

"Who knows what you call something that's connected?" I asked when Keesha finished her spiel again. "Linked together?"

"You mean like a…chain?" Tim asked.

"Very good Tim!" I commended him, turning around. "Tuna are linked to phytoplankton by what they eat. Tuna and phytoplankton belong to the same food chain."

"Food chain?" Ralphie asked, his eyes lighting up. "A chain of food? I could get into that!"

"Me too!" Keesha agreed. "Phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish and people, too. We're all in a food chain, scum, this fish and you!"

I nodded, glad that Keesha had finally put it all together. Although why this hadn't illuminated more of her future for me, I couldn't say. "Humans are usually at the very top of the food chain. But for once, we're actually inside it!" And so long as we were here… "We are also in the perfect position to study a tuna's digestive system!" I suggested, walking towards the front of the BUS with a twinkle in my eye.

Phoebe made a choking sound. "WHAT?"

"NOW?" Tim echoed, looking terrified.

Keesha spoke up above the sounds of dismay. "Ms. Frizzle, do you think we could go back to school now? Arnold and I need to do our report."

I did a quick survey of my students, most of whom were looking petrified at the opportunity I'd pointed out. My time sense indicated that it was late afternoon already. It had been quite a day, I think my students were just about done with the lessons from their ocean. Keesha had her connections. I suppose that was as far as I needed to take it for now.

"Well…if you insist." I began to unwind the peekerscope. "I guess we could leave the tuna's digestive system for another day…" I joked, hearing audible sighs of relief from the students.

The peekerscope wriggled its way out of the tuna's mouth, allowing me a fish-eye view of the ocean we were traversing. We would need some help if we were to get out of the tuna's mouth fast enough to avoid recapture. I scanned back and forth as the fish swam, waiting for something to…

There.

"Yes." I twisted the scope, getting a better look at the hook and lure dangling in front of our fish's mouth. "Hmmm. Very good."

I waved Liz to pull the transmalgafier for the peekerscope. "Okay class! Take your seats!" I called to them, ushering them towards their seats as the end of the peekerscope transformed into a claw and clamped down on the lure. The claw gave a firm tug just as I slipped back into the driver's seat. "Here we go!" The line was pulled taut and in an instant, we were out of the tuna's mouth being reeled back towards the surface. Everyone was thrown back against their seats as we hurtled upwards. Within seconds we broke the ocean's surface and were hauled into the air.

A tired-looking fisherwoman came into view peering at us from under her yellow rain-slicker. "Nope," She said to herself, plucking us off of her lure. "Already have a bus." She tossed us back overboard, unaware of the priceless treasure she had just cast back into the ocean.

We landed with a splash, Liz pulling the chameleon circuit just as I hit the shrinkerscope. The water around us bubbled as we shifted dimensions, returning us to the proper size once more. The BUS shifted and stretched, the roof peeling open and the seats ejecting us upwards. The BUS flattened itself into a surfboard and caught us neatly, riding the waves back towards the shore.

"This is it Ralphie!" Wanda shouted back to him. "The wave of our dreams!" She held out her arms just behind me, surfing wildly on the modest waves. Her classmates more or less copied her, most with more trepidation though.

"When we get back to the classroom," I called back to my students. "we will discuss our observations! Surf's up!" Now for something I'd been dying to try all day. I moved to the front of the BUS, balancing effortlessly even with Lizalria dangling by her tail from my shoulder. The edges of my toes curled over the ends of the BUS-board. My hearts pounded out an electrifying rhythm as we raced along the crest of the waves.

The humans called this 'hanging ten'.

'Radical.'

* * *

Sometime later, we'd made our way back to the school just in time for the remaining reports to finish up the day.

"So to wrap up our report," Keesha concluded, swallowing the last bite of her long-overdue lunch, "allow us to show you the artwork we've commissioned. An original 'Tim'!" Her and Arnold rolled down a large poster sheet covered in Tim's quick rendering of the ocean food chain we'd explored that day.

I watched from the back of the class, trying to focus my time-sense enough to see if my actions today had made any difference. Right now, I was still seeing nothing. Arnold went over the food chain once more for his classmates and I squinted hard, straining my ability as best I could. Nothing.

I tried not to let my frustration show as nothing more revealed itself. I'd given Keesha exactly what she needed: connections. Why had that not illuminated anything new? My gaze shifted to Wanda, seated towards the front of the class. Tim sat right behind her. Still nothing had shifted between them, if anything, Wanda's future had become even more crowded and muggy. But there was no direct connection to her partner from today.

"It's so ef-fish-ent!" Carlos quipped as Arnold finished up his report, which earned him a resounding chorus of "Carlos!" from his peers. I stopped searching through the muggy future in favor of chuckling at Carlos' joke.

Perhaps I wasn't going far enough with the connections. I walked around to the front of the room, pointing out a poster on the blackboard: "And this class, is a land food chain!" The picture showed a mouse, snake, and hawk on a field of grass and flowers. We discussed the dynamics of species predator-prey relations and the connections between all the life on this planet.

"Hey wait a minute!" Keesha exclaimed suddenly as we discussed the similarities between the food chains. "Do _all_ food chains begin with plants?"

My time sense suddenly flared, Keesha's future glowing just the slightest bit brighter. It was enough, for now. "Yes they do!" I cried, elation at finally seeing some progress leaking into my voice. "Each and every one of them!"

My class cheered, thrilled by the new worlds of possibility our adventures today had provided them with.

"Well," Arnold said, crouching down next to his bag and rummaging through it. "if scum and a tuna fish sandwich are connected, I guess just about everything must be connected somehow, huh?"

I smiled at him, realizing for the first time the impact today had had on him. For the first time since I'd known him, he was excited about what we were covering. Once Keesha had helped him see how their report worked out, he'd been thrilled. I'd never seen him so curious and confident.

Perhaps 'connections' could be important to his future as well.

Arnold rummaged into his bag, his face falling. "Hey," he asked the room in general, "where's my shoe?"

It seems that sometime in between our excursions outside of the BUS, Arnold's algae-covered sneaker had been lost. I was about to answer when the final bell rang, releasing my students from my limited time supervising them. Wanda and Ralphie made a break for the door first, shoving each other aside playfully in their mad dash. The rest of the class followed a little more subdued.

Grimacing, Arnold shouldered his bag and began hopping on his remaining show towards the classroom door.

"Do you need any help, Arnold?" Keesha asked.

"I'll be okay." He said to her, holding out his arms to keep his balance. Keesha said nothing but she stayed two steps behind him the whole way out.

I followed the class outside, feeling a little sorry that I'd lost Arnold's shoe. Maybe I could spend tonight looking for it. But it would probably be in any number of dimensions given how many times we'd changed 'size' today…

This would be a bigger endeavor than I thought…

As I followed Arnold and Keesha's slow progress down the halls of the school, I send a mental command to the BUS. With a few manipulations, I was able to command any objects we had 'shrunk' that day to return to their normal dimensions as soon as they had the required space to do so. The BUS beeped inside my head, assuring me that my command had gone through. Now at least I'd be looking for a normal-sized human shoe.

Arnold had made it outside by this point, still hopping. Was he planning to travel all the way home like that?

Something falling from the sky caught my attention and I looked up just in time to see a boy's sneaker fall into Arnold's outstretched hands.

"Nature never ceases to amaze me…" Arnold marveled as he held his returned shoe.

I couldn't have said it better myself. I was pretty sure this was something I'd had absolutely no hand in. Well, except for it returning to normal size. "As I always say," I suggested to Arnold. "if the shoe is clean, wear it."

Blushing, Arnold pulled on his damp sneaker, the rest of us laughing in merriment at the conclusion to a very odd cycle of a day.

* * *

As my students headed home, I returned to my classroom, Lizalria on my shoulder. I made sure to give the skeleton a good bump as I passed it. Too bad he couldn't walk, he didn't know what I got up to on my field trips. I smirked to myself and ignored him as he tilted his head in annoyance, unable to voice his displeasure because of the voice chip currently crushed somewhere in the back of my closet. Oops.

Liz vanished to her own habitat inside the classroom, curling up in her hammock and waving goodbye to me sleepily. I wished her a good rest. I had things to do.

A door opened up behind the skeleton, my mental link with the BUS urging me to go through it. I obliged, shaking my head as I passed through the door and entered the cockpit of my vehicle. It always did this, making doors appear in the strangest of places. It didn't like fitting around this Earth classroom any more than I liked having to live here. But both of us were stuck so we'd have to make do. In the meantime, if my students ever saw me popping out of a random door, I'd have to hope they never questioned it.

From the cockpit, I stepped out the 'emergency door' at the rear of the BUS and entered into my quarters, which the BUS had helpfully provided for me upon our arrival here. Since I couldn't live at the school without raising concerns from nosy humans, the BUS had transplanted my quarters about a mile away, making the room appear as a separate building entirely, compete with my garden and workshop.

I crossed the living space, picking up some of my tools along the way and passed through another doorway into my room. With a snap of my fingers, the BUS fed power into the room, turning on the lights and starting up the projectors.

I placed my few devices and tools down on the sideboard outside the room before shedding my perception filter and stepping into the projection booth proper. The space was octagonal, black and contained nothing. I didn't need sleeping space like humans did. Instead, this entire room was covered with everything I knew about my students. Every wall was dedicated to one of them, containing projections of my mental image of them, and small hints to their futures I'd either seen or added myself as a record of the strength of their relationships. Translucent strings hung between some of them, illustrating new possibilities for their relationships in the future. The holographic generations were linked to my time-sense and shuffled accordingly to add the miniscule details I'd achieved from today's field trip.

I stepped into the room completely, the door sealing behind me to bring up Phoebe's wall. A thin string stretched from her to Wanda and another from her to Keesha. But they were very flimsy and might very easily break if not nurtured. I stared at them for a moment, pondering if I knew enough about those relationships to try to encourage them further. I did not. Phoebe was one of the humans I needed to pay some more attention to in the future. Her wall contained nothing but her picture.

I crossed to the center of the room and stared above me at the glowing web of projections created by all my little facts. The future they were meant for, the one I was trying to push all of them towards. The beams of light that connected them all crossed this space, held it up and gave it depth and light. Some – like one connecting Tim to Carlos — were thickening day by day, holding up a significant portion of the light. But others – like Phoebe and Wanda's — were significantly thinner and had remained unchanged.

Opening the telepathic link with the projectors, I adjusted Wanda's display, which at the moment contained only an image of her and several blurry items that I had yet to make sense of: a stethoscope, some kind of earth vessel, a treasure chest, and a shell.

But at the moment, her wall was dominated by a series of glowing red beams of light which stretched out to the rest of my students. I traced several with my eyes before finally finding the one I needed. Pinching the beam between my fingers, I gave it a little shake. It vibrated in my grip, then turned from red to the normal golden color of the connection strings. I released it and regarded the six other red ones. Wanda's possible partners.

I sighed. No new revelations about today. Unless the fact that Tim probably wasn't pivotal to Wanda's future was supposed to count. That and the fact that Keesha apparently needed the ocean for her 'connections'.

I stood under the glowing web of their future, watching the small golden particles shift and change around the mass as the present and my time sense changed their prospective futures. Their futures were built on two things: their skills and their relationships. Both of which they were apparently supposed to be discovering this year or soon after.

I considered all the threads before me, the blurry pieces of their identities and vague hints at what I was supposed to be guiding them towards. It had already been a month and all I had was a mess of possibilities.

Could I really do this in time?


End file.
